


The Changing

by ShadowThorne



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, M/M, Survival Horror, Zombie Apocalypse, mild angst compared to my usual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-03-17 02:56:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13649985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowThorne/pseuds/ShadowThorne
Summary: All hell breaks loose, leaving a couple of ordinary men and one not so ordinary one to survive a zombie outbreak. Rated for violence, blood, language and sexual themes, all that good stuff.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy!

Life lesson number one; the zombies may have been endless, but ammo and resources were not. 

It was a thing he’d learned a long time ago, or it seemed like a long time, anyway. Once upon a time, seven months wouldn’t have sounded so monumental. In the scheme of things, seven months was barely a passing of time; hardly even half a year. Now, though… now each month was a new milestone. Seven of them was damn near a miracle.

In that time he’d learned that if the zombies weren’t bothering you, you didn’t bother them. So much ammo had been wasted early on, trying to clear rooms he could have just as easily sneaked passed, or out of boredom when there was nothing to do but snipe the monsters roaming the streets. He didn’t do that anymore. If he could quietly walk past a hoard of the smelly things, he did. They weren’t really something you could learn to live with, but you could learn to live around them. Carefully.

Presently, the man carried with him all of the belongings he kept permanently. There weren’t many; a backpack of supplies that included rope, some canned food he’d found in the last building he’d crashed in, and what extra ammo he had to the shot gun he avoided using at all costs. A small collection of knives were belted along his hip, mostly the standard utility knives that almost every man on the planet carried with them during their day to day lives, but there was a decent hunting knife too. In the pocket of his cargo pants could be found half a dozen homemade wooden spikes. They were easy to make, just glorified sharped sticks, but they did wonders for downing a dead on the go or in a tight spot. And they were replaceable, expendable, which made them ideal. And then there was his prized possession; a sword that had once belonged to a good friend of his. The blade was secured in a makeshift sheath that he’d tied to his pack so that it was easy to carry while keeping his hands free.

It was a life of being constantly on the move. Every so often he’d hole up for a few days at a time, a week or two maybe, but rarely any longer than that and only if the surrounding area was quiet and well stocked. The seasons were taking a turn towards winter, though, and he’d have to figure out what to do about that. It was hard enough making it through the day, sometimes, let alone thinking ahead to the coming months.

As it was, he’d been trooping through deserted stretches of old back country roads between towns for days, the kind that had more potholes than blacktop. The good thing about these tiny ass towns was that there was always a big farm house or an old barn dotting every few miles, meaning he had a few options for cover during the nights. He was getting close to the next town, though. He’d been able to see the dismal skyline of buildings when the sun had come up hours earlier. He was pushing to make it that far before the day was out and had skipped the dilapidated house that had looked to have been abandoned even before the outbreak that he’d passed a mile and half back.

A mild groaning caught his attention and he waved a vague motion, “Yeah, I’m getting tired too.” He said, but kept walking. They were running out of daylight, which didn’t really matter too much. The zombies weren’t any more active during the night than they were during the daytime, but at least in the light of the sun you could see them coming. The darkness hid them surprisingly well. And the temperature was dropping during the nighttime hours. He pointed to a building in the distance, a small house or maybe even a shed on the edge of the town he was approaching. “As soon as we get there and clear it, we’ll camp out and rest. Maybe stick around for a day or two, depending on the condition of it. What do you think?”

The creature trailing him grumbled a wordless, unintelligible sound.

“You’re the least picky girlfriend I’ve ever had.” An almost indignant growl crept from a decaying throat and the man grunted a laugh, glancing back over his shoulder. “You’re talkative today, Shiro. Glad to see you’re feeling better.” The zombie garbled a few more sounds that almost mimicked regular human speech patterns in return and he laughed like it’d just told a joke.

 

•••••••

 

On the edge of town, Ichigo panted as he half jogged back towards the barn he’d made his resting place for the last few days. The air was getting cold during the nights and his calm breaths puffed out in front of him in little plumes. He’d been an average enough young man before all this, in his last year of earning his degree, working towards getting his phD. A lot of good that fancy degree did him, now that the world had gone to shit, but the knowledge still served him well. So had the grueling afternoons of track practice and meets. His old man used to like to give him a hard time about adding another stress factor onto his plate, said it was a distraction from his studies. He was increasingly glad he’d added that extra work to his life, though. Already being in shape when the outbreak had hit this side of the country might very well have been what saved him.

He slowed his jog as he reached the building he would be staying the night in; an old barn that had held horses at some point, probably. It was a beat up, shack of a building but despite the small cracks and gaps between boards, the walls were sturdy.

When he looked up, however, he jerked to a stop. Had he forgotten to pull the barn door shut behind him? He was pretty sure he hadn’t… But he hadn’t seen any living people yet and the resident zombies seemed content to stay in the streets of the small town. 

Shaking it off, Ichigo eased through the doorway. But then, as the door creaked while he eased it shut, he thought he heard the scuffing of feet on dirty flooring.

‘Shit,’ Ichigo mentally berated himself, ‘shit shit shit…’ He knew he’d shut that door and now, as he edged toward the opening of one of the old horse stalls, he watched a zombie shuffle about in the corner. His gun was already drawn but he had to load the chamber and the small, three stall barn was so quiet… 

He stared at the monstrosity with wide eyes but his hands were steady as he eased the hammer back. The metallic click was sharp in the silence and he held his breath, watched as the creature’s head jerked up and around with the hunger-driven speed of its heritage, watched as those dead eyes landed on him without fail, but a charge never came. Not even a snarl. If anything, it seemed to smile as it tilted its head just slightly, looking past him.

Then, before Ichigo could squeeze the trigger, a thin strip of cold steel settled almost gently against the side of his neck. A rough voice from behind sent a ripple down his spine. “Shoot him and your head’ll hit the floor before he does.”

Ichigo froze, a thousand things flashing through his mind; confusion, revolution, dread, disbelief. He’d met other survivors. There was a reason he was alone now. Sometimes the word survivor was a loose term. Sometimes they survived in body and life but not mind. The blade against his neck pushed forward into his view, revealing a length much too vast to be a knife, as the man behind him stepped closer. A sword. “Are you crazy?!” He half whispered, eyes darting back to the beast in front of him, “That’s a–“ Decoy, his mind supplied as he was cut off by the deep voice. 

“Hands up. Turn around and face me. If you so much as wave that thing in his direction, you’re deader than he is.”

“What?! What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

There was obvious agitation in the voice, “I swear to god, I don’t care that you’re the first living, breathing person I’ve seen in a month. Turn around.”

In front of him, the zombie stared with unblinking eyes, its head cocked at an angle and its shoulders drooping slightly. Long, tangled white hair had been pulled back in a messy, amateur tail and tied there with a bit of frayed rope. Black nailed fingers curled and uncurled in a slow but ready motion.

“That thing-“ The edge of the blade pressed harder against the side of his neck. He could feel his pulse dance against it. This wasn’t the same as the other off the wall survivors he’d encountered. “Ok… ok.” He soothed, motions slow as he raised his hands and began to turn to face the speaker. He was gifted with the sight of a tall, lean man, built to suit a harsh life on the move. Wild hair crowned his head and hard, cold blue eyes drilled into his, more frightening and threatening than the sneer twisting handsome features. A big hand was held out towards him and Ichigo hesitated to hand the gun over.

The decision was made for him. Silent as a ghost and faster than he could react, the gun was snatched from his raised hand from behind. He jumped in surprise, nearly turning to look but for the sword against his throat that kept him still.

A grin creased the stranger’s features. “Thanks, Shiro.”

Behind Ichigo, a grunt that very nearly could have passed as a laugh came from the creature he’d been about to shoot. The zombie leaned in close as it pushed around him, its breath fanning against the side of his face. He cringed away from it, watching warily as it passed by him. There was something off about it, about the way it moved and acted, lacking the usual frenzy of hunger most zombies had while around a living person. It dropped the gun to the wooden floor as it neared the door, where it stopped to stand motionless like a sentry.

Ichigo slowly let his attention fall back on the sword wielder, a hard frown on his features. “What is that thing?” He asked, hands still up. 

“His name’s Shiro.” The man said and, without skipping a beat, “That gun against your spine points in his direction, it’s not him you’ll need to fear.” Then the sword was lowered and the big man took a step back. “I’m Grimmjow.”

“Ichigo.” The young man absently responded in kind, his gaze traveling past the living person and towards the dead one again. He shook his head. “Are you some sort of-” A nut job, he wanted to say, but didn’t feel it was a good idea to insult a man so obviously bat-shit insane when there was a very real sword in his hands and a pet zombie a call away. “- zombie sympathizer?”

“Only when he’s concerned,” Grimmjow said, nodding in the creature’s direction as he moved off to drop down against a wall, “You wanna kill any of the other ones, be my guest.” He propped the sword against the wall at his side. It stood taller than he sat by a long shot, the white blade glinting in the fading light that seeped through cracks in the worn walls. “We’re staying the night. I promised him we’d take a break. You’re welcome to stay too.”

“Welcome to stay?” Ichigo scoffed, “This is my-“

“Not anymore.” Grimmjow aimed a heart-breaking grin at the younger and set about cleaning his sword. The zombie at the door grumbled a growling, watery sound. “Oh, yeah! Of course, you can come sit down for a while too. I’m sure Ichigo wont mind locking the door for you.”

Ichigo stared in utter disbelief. He could have sworn the creature rolled its eyes. Whether it did or not, Ichigo was still astonished to watch it turn its strange eyes on him -like twin fires in the dark of a lightless sky- as it moved with slightly dragging steps to do as it was bid. It sat down beside the big man and watched quietly as the stranger laid the sword across his lap and began to polish it.

“It understands you…?”

“He.” Grimmjow corrected, then shrugged, not looking up. “I think they all do to some extent, they just don’t care. Or can’t care, maybe. I’m a hell of a lot less likely to give a shit when I’m starving too, ya know?” He caught the disbelieving look aimed his way and ignored it.

After a few minutes, Ichigo moved to grab the gun that had been dropped. A pair of blue and a pair of dead eyes looked up at him, but when he cleared the chamber and put the gun in his belt, both seemed placated and went back to what they were doing. After another minute, he pushed the barn door closed the rest of the way and dropped the heavy wooden arm across the makeshift metal slots he’d installed a few nights ago. Then he moved to sit across from the pair, where he sat and studied them.

If they noticed, they were unfazed. 

Pale, lifeless fingers twitched, before the creature raised its hand. The big man, Grimmjow, he’d called himself, paused and watched, pulling his hand out of the way as the zombie ran a finger down the handle of the blade with careful, surprisingly precise motions, following the pattern of the cloth ito. Half a smirk tugged at handsome features as Grimmjow watched, an odd patience found in his expression and the way he held himself that certainly hadn’t been there while threatening Ichigo.

Ichigo frowned.

After a moment, the creature mumbled wordlessly and shifted like it was anxious. 

“I know, I know.” Grimmjow replied quietly, like he understood what the thing said. He began polishing the sword again.

Ichigo frowned harder.

The odd man was large for sure, both taller and heavier than Ichigo. He easily reached six feet tall and even through the layers of clothing, corded muscle was visible as he moved. His hair was dirty and grime smeared his features and his forearms where he’d pushed his sleeves up, as was to be expected of someone living on the streets like they were. Water to bathe in was more than just a luxury. It was practically a dream. But he looked surprisingly healthy, and certainly whole. Scars decorated what skin was visible but they were well healed and faded. His vivid eyes were trained down at the task at hand; clear and focused and bright.

At his side, the zombie sat in a more sorry state. It had clearly seen its fair share of scraps and encounters as well, but unlike the man, it didn’t have living flesh and a healthy body that could heal its wounds. The pants it wore were faded and torn and too big on its thin but athletic frame. The shoes it wore were mismatched, the laces double knotted at an angle that suggested the blue haired man must have tied them. The creature didn’t wear a shirt. Months ago, Ichigo would have gagged at the sight of pale bone and blue-grey innards. Seeing it in the field was different from seeing it on a clean, clinical table. Flesh had been torn away from its torso, shredded from the front of its ribcage on one side and down nearly to its navel. Strips of dead, bloodless meat still clung to the wound, crisscrossing over the thing’s guts like something sharp had tried to tear its way through and succeeded. The rough gouge cut through the exposed bone of a rib looked fairly fresh, yet to be weathered down by time, movement and exposure. Despite how calmly it sat on the floor, it wasn’t dormant the way other zombies tended to be when they ran out of things to kill and eat and the energy to keep their activity up. It was the strangest thing he’d ever seen, and considering he’d seen the rise of a zombie outbreak, that was something.

“Can’t you at least put a shirt on it?” Ichigo asked, not all that shy about his wariness and mild disgust.

The big man hardly seemed offended. He shrugged a shoulder, not looking up as he flipped the blade over to begin on the other side. “Him. If you can find one he’ll wear, you’re welcome to put it on him. I’ve tried, though. He says they’re uncomfortable.”

“…he tells you they’re uncomfortable?”

“More or less.”

“Zombies don’t talk… You know that, right?” Ichigo was careful with his tone, trying not to offend or agitate the man and his dangerous pet while he tried to prompt him into realizing he must be crazy.

“Yeah, man, I’ve been out here just as long as you have. I’ve dealt with the bastards and their outbreak just as long as you. Do I look like I’m stupid?” At Grimmjow’s side, the zombie garbled a few sounds. “Not you, you don’t count.”

After he was done cleaning and polishing the sword -an hour long ritual Ichigo was sure had become daily, whether the sword had been used or not- Grimmjow slid it back into its makeshift sheath attached to his pack and propped the whole thing up against the wall beside him. “Hows the area around here look? We good to start a small fire?”

Ichigo, tired despite his paranoia and understandable caution about being near the stranger and his pet, nodded. “Yeah. There’s a cluster of dead in town but they don’t venture out this far often. There’s an old water tower that creaks and groans. Keeps them distracted. The barn is solid enough to hide the light so it’s fine as long as it stays small.” He pointed towards a ring of old bricks that had already been charred black with soot where he’d made a fire the night prior.

Grimmjow matched his nod and moved away from the wall and his things, crossing the short space to sit next to the ring. He pushed a few of the splintered boards stacked around the fire ring into a small pyramid, then half leaned over to reach into his back pocket. He pulled out an old, beat up leather wallet, setting it on the ground beside him, and a lighter. From the wallet, he pulled out a paper bill and lit it on fire with the lighter. After it caught, he pushed it under the dry wood, using the money as kindling to start his fire.

Ichigo watched for a second, frowning his mild curiosity. His attention shifted to the zombie but the creature hadn’t moved, so he slowly stood and moved to sit across the fire pit from the man. “You still carry your wallet?”

The bigger man grunted a laugh, but nodded and picked it up. The leather was faded and worn down to threads in parts from where his hands had run across it many, many times. “Yeah. Stupid, right? Still has my license and credit card and everything. Just one of those old, comforting habits, I guess.”

“No,” Ichigo said, quiet. He eyed the wallet as it was opened and though he couldn’t see the contents, he could see the number of little plastic picture sleeves in it. It occurred to him that the man was young, but not too young to have had a family, maybe a wife and kids. “That’s not stupid.”

After a drawn out, heavy moment, the blue-eyed man seemed to shrug off whatever the question had brought up. He tucked the wallet back into his back pocket, added the lighter too, and sat up a little straighter. “You eat yet?” When all he got was a slight shake of the smaller’s head, he grinned. “Dinner’s on me then. Shiro, grab my bag, will ya?”

Ichigo stiffened as the undead creature huffed a wheezing, wet breath of annoyance and climbed to its feet. It brought the bag over and dropped it in Grimmjow’s lap. As it started to drop down to sit next to the man, Grimmjow half jolted and snagged the creature by the back of the belt holding its pants up. He dragged it back a step, a scowl on his face. “C’mon, Shi, remember the last time you sat too close to the fire?”

The zombie hissed a sound that rattled in its throat.

“Of course you don’t.” Grimmjow sighed, rolling his eyes. The zombie turned on him with a scowl and a rush of angry, growling mumbles and Grimmjow held his hands up in a placating manner, “Ok, ok, fine! You do remember. Sorry. Shit. Sometimes its hard to tell what you’re saying. Back off.”

The zombie huffed another breath, settling down, and turned a dry, dead look on Ichigo, who choked on the laugh that wanted to escape at the odd scene.

Grimmjow glared at the creature for an extra second, then went about pulling a couple of cans and a can opener out of his bag. He didn’t bother asking for preferences or apologizing over the limited options. Anything edible was good eating.

When he turned to the task at hand, in an incredibly childish display that also would have been funny under normal circumstances, as a last word of sorts, the zombie flashed teeth at the side of Grimmjow’s head. The big man clearly saw it, but he merely rolled his eyes like it had happened a thousand times and ignored it.

On the other side of the fire, Ichigo, however, was horrified. He involuntarily jerked back where he sat across the small fire from the two. Not only was the stranger keeping a pet zombie, but, “It still has its teeth? What the hell is wrong with you!? What if it bites, are you insane??”

Bared teeth disappeared behind a slight frown as the zombie turned to look at him. Similarly, Grimmjow also looked up, a bit of a disbelieving look on his face. After a second, he laughed like it must have been a joke, head thrown back and great amusement in the deep rumble of his voice. “Shiro doesn’t bite!” He said with a wide grin, turning to his zombie companion. Without warning and totally unprompted, he shoved his fingers clear up to the last knuckles into the creature’s mouth.

Shiro reacted instantly, curling his lip and scrunching up the bridge of his nose. Ichigo stared in horror, on the verge of springing to his feet, as the creature very nearly toppled backwards to get away from the treatment, going so far as to gag and growl his dislike. When Grimmjow pulled his slobber covered hand back, wiping it on his shirt, the zombie scrambled upright and glared murder down at him. Then he grumbled and ‘complained’ the entire way around the fire -an extra step away from it as he shuffled by- and dropped to sit at Ichigo’s side instead, where he continued to glare at Grimmjow over the flames.

Ichigo leaned away from it, but couldn’t help but look between the creature and the human it glared at and back again. The entire display was ridiculous and while he hadn’t made a point to spend any extra time getting to know a zombie or two, he was fairly certain this was not normal zombie behavior.

On the opposite side of the fire, Grimmjow threw his hands up, “What?” He half shouted in offended disbelief, “You like him more than me now? Well have fun, asshole, he doesn’t even like you back. He thinks you’re gross and a monster.”

Shiro hissed a complaint back, frowning as he scooted a bit to put a few extra inches between himself and Ichigo.

“What- I didn’t– I didn’t say that…” Ichigo stammered, completely bewildered as to why he cared if he just inadvertently hurt a zombie’s feelings. “You’re not– I…”

The zombie looked at him with a dry expression and sighed a puff of air from its nose. It rattled in his chest on the way out. Then, as if purely to prove him wrong, it leaned toward him and Ichigo automatically leaned away. Shiro cocked his head slightly and rolled his eyes, sitting up again as he scooted another few inches away.

Ichigo mentally stumbled over the reaction and how to take it. Had it been a living person sitting beside him -granted, a good arm’s length away now- he’d have done just about anything in his power to make amends. But… A zombie…? With few options, he instead turned his bewildered look over to said zombie’s owner. 

Grimmjow grinned wide and sharp over the fire at him.

Ichigo glared daggers.

Later, Grimmjow lead Shiro into one of the old stalls where the two laid down for the night. Ichigo eyed the pair speculatively, a little reserved and maybe unsure what to think about it, as he listened to bigger man talk to his companion. 

“It’s fine, Shi, I promised we could settle down for a night or two, right? Go ahead and rest.” Grimmjow said as he pushed the half-height stall door closed behind them. The zombie groaned and Ichigo frowned at how, even though it was just a random, unintelligible sound, the big man seemed to know what it was saying. Blue eyes turned in the smaller’s direction over the door as Grimmjow answered, “Don’t worry about him, he’s one of the decent ones, it’ll be fine.” and sank down against the wood of the stall’s interior.

Ichigo frowned, wondering if that was supposed to be a warning, but it didn’t matter. The stranger was right; Ichigo wouldn’t have been able to knife the two in the middle of the night for no reason. Odd as the pair was, they’d fed him and were letting him stay when they could have easily forced him out into the darkening streets, or just outright killed him when they’d first appeared. They were strong, he could tell, and he was outnumbered.

After a few minutes of listening to bodies shift, cloth rub against the ground and the heavy, hollow sound of a shotgun being loaded, Ichigo chose a spot near the wall opposite of the stall and prepared to settle in for the night. He pulled his gun into his lap, but he already knew he wouldn’t need to use it.

That next morning, Grimmjow awoke with the sun, like usual, and just like usual, he was calm and quiet as he rolled over to take a quick, cursory glance about his surroundings before realizing something was missing. He bolted upright, searching the space of the stall he’d closed behind himself and Shiro the night prior, but the creature was gone and the door was latched.

“Shi? Shiro?!” Grimmjow jumped to his feet, nearly tripping in his haste, and tore around the corner of the stall, half panicked. The only thing he could think of was the stranger they’d met the night prior, the one he was currently cursing himself for trusting. “Ichigo! If you hurt him, I swear-“

“–to god that you don’t care if I’m the first living breathing person you’ve seen in a month– yeah yeah yeah,” Ichigo mimicked with a roll of his eyes, “I heard you the first time.”

Seated in front of him on the ground with his hands clasped together in his lap, the zombie snorted an airy sound that could have passed as a laugh. Other than the rough sound, he didn’t move, not even enough to turn his head to look at Grimmjow.

Grimmjow stood there where he’d skidded to a halt a pace away and stared down at the two, a little shocked to see them interacting, let alone the task the stranger had set himself to. “What the hell are you doing?”

Ichigo again rolled his eyes, but didn’t look up as he worked long, greasy strands of colorless hair between his fingers. “Well… I was just going to cut it off. It’s more practical than long hair, and that tail was so knotted and poorly done…”

Grimmjow’s brows furrowed into a mild glare.

“But he-“

Then he interrupted the stranger, crossing his arms over his chest, “He likes his hair long.”

Ichigo looked up at him finally, his hands pausing as he took the bigger man’s measure. After a second, “Yeah. I figured that out.” With a mildly bewildered shake of his head, he went back to untangling the creature’s matted, messy hair. It was even longer than he’d first realized, now that the strands were straighter and less tangled, reaching to the creature’s mid-back. “So I’ve spent the past half an hour cutting that rope from his hair and trying to untangle it.” In front of him, Shiro shifted, half turning to look over at his companion as he took note of the tension between the two. Ichigo’s motions stilled and he stiffened, readied, before drawling a semi suspicious, “We agreed before I let you out of that stall…”

The zombie mumbled wordlessly and faced forward again, going still but for the huff of air that made his damaged chest rise and fall steeply.

Grimmjow snorted a laugh, finally dropping to sit in front of where they’d made their fire the night prior. “He’s not going to turn around and eat your face off. You don’t have to treat him like he’s not trustworthy.”

“Yeah, well…” Ichigo went back to the task at hand, dividing the smoother mess of hair into three sections to begin braiding it all into something less easily tangled and snagged. “I didn’t say I magically decided he wasn’t a dead. I just… felt bad about yesterday. Thanks to you. So when I saw that he’d woken up before you and he was trying to figure out how to open up that stall door, I figured I could make up for it. We’re even after this.”

“You may not trust him, but he obviously trusts you.” Grimmjow commented, watching a moment longer. He studied the way his friend sat so patiently and still. Granted, part of his patience came from being undead. He’d never been all that patient in life. But still. “He decides pretty quick who we like and who we don’t.”

“What? Is he like a dog now?” Ichigo quipped back, a bit of heat in his voice.

“No, and don’t you dare treat him like one.” Grimmjow narrowed his eyes, “But he does run on more instinct now and I trust his judgement.”

Ichigo blinked, his frown turning less apprehensive and more thoughtfully confused. “Are you saying you like me now? After threatening to cut my head off last night?”

“No. I’m saying I trust you.” Grimmjow drawled, a growl in his voice. “Enough so to sleep locked in a barn with you.”

“Your guard zombie would have kept you safe.”

Grimmjow shrugged. Shiro grumbled. Ichigo continued his braiding, and Grimmjow continued his line of thought. “Enough to share space and food with you, another survivor, when I’ve ran into more deadly living than I have dead. You get my point, don’t play dumb.”

Ichigo scoffed an unimpressed sound, but the bigger man wasn’t wrong in what he was getting at and Ichigo had no desire to prove him otherwise. It’d been a while since he’d come across other living people, and even longer since he’d done so and not felt endangered by their presence. The defensiveness in his actions and words was just second nature at this point. He’d been screwed over before and he was determined not to let his death be at the hands of a living person.

A few seconds longer and Ichigo finished the braid, using the longest part of the rope he’d cut out of the creature’s hair originally to tie it off. He eyed his handy work for a moment, decided it would serve its purpose, and climbed to his feet. “Ok, you’re done.” He said, backing up a step before the zombie had the chance to start moving around. He watched it as it belatedly reacted to his words, then turned to Grimmjow as he spoke, “We’re not going to be able to stay long. I’ve spent the last few days digging through the area. The town’s small, barely three streets. There’s not much here.”

Grimmjow glanced over at his friend, half a smirk tugging at one corner of his lips when the zombie reached up and, lacking refined motor skills, missed in his first attempt to get ahold of the long braid of his hair. He absently nodded his understanding and agreed, “Yeah, we need to keep heading south before winter sets in. Nights are getting cold. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the resources to last a winter out here right now, especially if we get a harsh one and a lot of snow.”

Ichigo cringed. His input wasn’t needed. One look around showed he didn’t have it any better than Grimmjow did. They were both alone, both on the move, without established safety, let alone a reliable source of food and necessities.

They rested up another night, then gathered their things that next morning. Without a word about it, they set out together, the three of them.


	2. Chapter 2

Life lesson number two; as many zombies as there was in a post apocalyptic hell, there was even more down time. After all the running and fighting, there came another kind of survival. After all the flesh eating monsters and the stress of an endangered life on the move, dusk still came. After all the exhaustion and struggling, quiet nights and rest and one’s own mind became monsters of their own.

It’d been a couple weeks since they had run into each other and more or less agreed to be traveling companions. While there was danger in large groups, there was strength in small numbers and the two of them plus one not-quite-zombie seemed the perfect number. They were strong together, resourceful. Grimmjow and his pet were a damn good team, a little reckless, but good at this. And the company wasn’t half bad.

It was late into the night, a little fire crackling quietly on the floor in the kitchen of what used to be a fairly upscale house once upon a time. They’d blocked the windows with blankets and towels, even some fabric torn from an old, beat up chair they found upturned in one room, purely to insure the flickering light wouldn’t attract unwanted attention throughout the night.

Seated in a corner of the room, Shiro dozed in what passed as his version of sleep. He didn’t need rest often, as Ichigo was learning, but occasionally if Grimmjow told him to rest, especially after the zombie had participated in a skirmish, he’d find a place to curl up and he’d lay there quietly. Sometimes he’d even close his eyes. At the moment, he wasn’t quite that asleep, but he absently, mindlessly toyed with a frayed edge of his dirty pants and the slight, relaxed lull to his head told Ichigo he was pretty out of it at the moment. It was uncannily similar to the way a dormant zombie settled down, hunching in against itself, except there was two warm bodies in the room and any normal zombie would have been frenzied.

The newcomer turned to his larger, still living companion, eyeing him speculatively for a moment. After a few minutes, a single brow arched and those incredibly blue eyes panned over to meet his gaze. Ichigo frowned, studying handsome features for a moment longer, before he half nodded over to the dozing zombie and redirected his attention back to the fire. “So what’s the deal with you two? I thought maybe you just found him and hung onto him because he’s useful or something, different from the others, but you treat him- You act like you’ve known him all your life. Was…” He trailed off, thinking maybe it wasn’t a question he should ask, but what could it hurt, really. “…was he a friend?”

Grimmjow grunted a laugh and Ichigo really expected to be met with the man’s usual antics and almost playful -though often abrasive- demeanor. Instead, Grimmjow nodded almost as if to himself and glanced over at where Shiro sat by himself. After an exaggerated moment, he half winced and his attention dropped to the fire in front of him.

“Yeah, something like that.” He finally said, but as he fell silent and the quiet dragged, the fire-warmed air felt pregnant and heavy. He sighed, absently pushing a hand back through his messy hair. “Yeah. Exactly that. We grew up in the same neighborhood, opposite sides of town. He got bullied a lot, I guess, got into a lot of fights, so his family enrolled him in my school halfway through seventh grade. Sixth. It was right before middle school. Anyway. We got along well. Got into fights together.” A bit of a grin tugged at Grimmjow’s lips and he shook his head at the obviously fond memories. “By high school we were inseparable and notorious for it. A lotta people made fun of us behind our backs, called us gay.” He shrugged, “Never to our faces though. Fuckers. I guess they were onto something, at least–“ He cut off, motioned to himself and winced again. “I never told him though. He was my best friend and I didn’t want to mess that up, so I never told him. I ended up leaving the country for university. He stayed here and apparently got into fencing and some other sword arts. I guess he was pretty good at it but I never got to see him compete.”

“The katana is his, then?” Ichigo asked, half a smile on his boyish features as he listened to the fondness in the bigger man’s voice. There was a sadness there too, though, an understandable one.

“Yeah. White; he always liked the creepy vibe it gave off when paired with his leucism. Said if he was going to stand out he might as well turn it into an advantage.” Grimmjow snorted an amused sound and continued his story. There wasn’t much else to do on quiet nights like this. “When I came back to the country, it was like nothing had changed. He met me at the airport and we got shit-faced drunk. I woke up naked in his bed the next morning and almost had a heart attack thinking I’d fucked up, but we’re both pretty sure nothing happened. Everything went back to normal for a while. Then the world went to shit. He was at work when it spread into our area. That shit was so fast, no one saw it coming. I guess you know how it was. Just… so damn fast. I tried to find him, couldn’t. I even hung around his place for a while, figuring he’d come back there first if anything but he never showed up and I couldn’t stay there forever… “ Grimmjow trailed off for a few seconds again.

Ichigo glanced over from the corners of his eyes, his brows furrowed. He thought, there in the flickering light of their fire, that he could see Grimmjow’s hands shaking where they rested in his lap. He’d never seen the man like this; shut down and lost and struggling. In the weeks they’d shared, Grimmjow was all fire and steel, all determination and energy and when it called for it, all destruction and rage and brutal grace. 

He swallowed and was about to speak up, about to say that the story didn’t need to continue, that he understood. But Grimmjow beat him to it.

“I just left him…” The big man breathed, shaking his head before he dropped it into his hands. His fingers twisted in the unruly strands that made up his bangs. “I had to, I had to go, but I… I wrote him off as gone. After almost a week of waiting for him, of scouring every place I could think of that he might have gone. He must have been dead. So I left. I-I moved on. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t dead, not yet…”

Grimmjow continued his story in sombre, heart wrenching tones. It churned Ichigo’s stomach just listening. There was so much in the man’s deep voice… 

_____

The day had been normal enough, or as normal as ‘zombie infested wasteland, dead city’ could get.

With an elbow on the windowsill and chin in hand, Grimmjow watched the street below the three story building he’d been camped out in, right on the edge of the city. Nothing much was happening, but zombie watching was about as much entertainment as people watching had been before the outbreak. Down below, a zombie shuffled from the shadows of an alley diagonal from the apartment building he’d made his temporary reprieve. Gore splashed its font and intestines fell in tangled loops from its torso. The movement had caught his attention, but behind the creature, a glint of bright metal held it. Gore stained the blade, dulling the usually pristine shine, but it was unmistakable; a sword. And not just any sword. Grimmjow had spent enough time at his best friend’s house to recognize the decorative prized possession that had once proudly hung upon a wall. Grimmjow had made fun of the owner for it more times than he could count,

‘You probably can’t even swing that thing! It’s almost as long as you are tall.’

‘Hah. I can. Won a swordsmanship competition with it when you were outta the country and if ya keep that up, you’re gonna find out first hand.’

It was true. Grimmjow hadn’t believed him at the time, but it was true. Shiro had known how to use that sword and now, six months after he’d lost track of his friend, that same sword was staring at him from the mouth of an alleyway.

Grimmjow wanted that sword.

He pushed from the window, grabbed the hunting rifle he’d found in the apartment across from the one he was camped out in, and rushed for the stairwell. He took the stairs two and three at a time, down the two floors to the ground level as fast as he could make it. The whole time, he internally cursed himself over and over again; Shiro couldn’t still be alive. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t. He was getting his hopes up and he’d be crushed when he found just the sword and no Shiro. Anyone could have pulled that sword from the wall of Shiro’s home. Anyone. The only reason he hadn’t done it himself was by some misguided hope that Shiro would come back for it.

For months, not knowing what had happened to the man he’d secretly, quietly fallen in love with had torn him up. Even now he wasn’t over it, he’d just…continued. What else could he do?

Grimmjow’s feet hit the stained carpet of the bottom floor landing and the big man slowed, approaching the front door quietly. He’d cleared the building, but there was no way to keep the monsters from the outside of it.

After insuring the area was quiet enough, he slipped from the heavy iron gate he’d propped against the doorway and made for the alley mouth. On his way by, he left a makeshift, wooden pike in the zombie’s head. It crumpled to the ground with a dull thump as he passed it, crouching in the shadows just beyond the darkened entrance.

The sword lay hardly a meter away, unmistakable in its color and the shape of its guard. A bit of hope bubbled in Grimmjow’s stomach, disgustingly similar to the feeling of wanting to vomit and he crept forward, eyes scanning the darkness, “Shiro?” He called, but his voice was too quiet to be heard, barely a whisper, and want and maybe even a spark of panic made it rise as he called again, “Shiro?!”

A scuffle from nearby hushed him, like shoes across dirty blacktop. Then a ragged breath, and finally a weak but unmistakable voice, “Shut up ya fuckin’ moron. You’re gonna draw attention.”

Grimmjow jerked upright and tore around the corner of an old dumpster to find Shiro propped against the brick wall beside it. Bright, fresh blood stained his front, smeared his features. “Shiro?!” He could hardly believe it, “You’re alive? You’re- I thought-“

Shiro smirked, dropping his head back against the brick wall he leaned on like he was exhausted. Like he was hurt bad. “Nah. But I’m g-glad ta see you are.”

“What are you talking about?” Grimmjow shook his head, confused. Or maybe just in denial. The damage was obvious. Already Shiro was starting to take on the characteristic lack of motor control that came with a bite. His hands twitched at his side, his eyes hardly focused on Grimmjow.

“Use my sword,” Shiro said, stopping halfway through the thought with a wince. Air bubbled in his throat for a second, before he pulled in another ragged breath and continued, “don’t waste your ammo.”

Again, Grimmjow shook his head, “I can’t do that, you can’t ask me to do that.”

“I am anyway. Don’t make me sit here and suffer through this. Don’t make me sit here and wait for it.” His voice wavered, “Grimmjow… I- I…”

–––

Ichigo listened quietly, unable to raise his gaze to find Grimmjow’s face. 

“It was so much worse than just finding his dead body would have been. That would have been closure, it would have been final and over with, but this-” The big man sighed, threw another splintered table leg onto the fire they’d made in the middle of a kitchen floor. “I couldn’t do it.” He all but whispered, watching the tile below char and blacken. “I couldn’t tell him how I felt when I had the chance, and I couldn’t kill him when he asked. He begged me to, yelled and cursed at me when I refused. But I– …I ended up waiting with him instead, even after he ran out of the strength to argue, and when he finally took his last breath, I pulled him out of that alley and carried him back to where I was staying. One of the people that had lived in that complex owned a dog. Big. I remembered seeing half of it while clearing the building the first time around. I dropped Shiro’s body off and went back to find the collar and leash. Went back to get his sword after I’d secured him to the railing in the bathroom. I kept him tied up for a long time. It took a few days, which was weird. Usually, after they die, it happens so fast. I really didn’t think he was gonna come back. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t have… But he did, in the middle of the night. I’ll never forget what he looks like when he’s out for blood.” Grimmjow half laughed, but bowed his head as he spoke, fingers massaging at his temples and face mostly hidden. “Woke up to snarling and growling and the rail groaning under the strain of his struggling. All I could do was watch him, wait for him to get free. I think… I think, if he’d gotten free, I would have let him kill me. I should have finished him off. I shouldn’t have let him get this far at all, but after he changed.. I really should have just did what he’d asked of me, while he was still himself, but… After a while he went quiet. Dormant kind of. And he’d only start up the snarling again if I made too much noise or got too close.”

Nearby, the zombie they spoke of mumbled wordlessly to himself, shifting about restlessly in his corner like Grimmjow’s sudden turn of darkened spirits bothered him.

“I have no idea how it happened or why, but each day, when I’d come back to check on him, he was a little less volatile, a little more like- like… well, not like himself, but not like one of them either. Now,” Grimmjow shrugged, motioning towards his companion, a man he’d loved once upon a time, “this is what’s left. It’s funny. I finally have the courage to tell him I loved him, and it doesn’t matter. He can’t understand. He’s not even alive anymore.”

After another long moment, Ichigo’s voice was a little choked as he stated more than asked, “But you still love him anyway.”

At his side, Grimmjow nodded, staring across at his once best friend, his now zombie companion. “Yeah. I still love him.”

And so he’d kept the zombie. When the surrounding area would no longer support him and he decided it was time to move on, he’d finally braved untying the dead man. Shiro hadn’t moved, like he was still dormant despite the living human so close, but as Grimmjow dropped the stretched, frayed collar and took a step back, those strange eyes had snapped first to the discarded collar, then up to Grimmjow himself.

Not knowing what to do or how to react, Grimmjow had collected his already packed bag and left. He’d left the doors open, thinking he’d leave Shiro to wander like the rest of the zombies that roamed the city, but he’d hardly made it down the hall and out the front door of the apartment when he’d heard the awkward, unpracticed scuffle of stiff limbs and heavy steps. They’d been together ever since; Grimmjow talking and leading, Shiro quiet and following, for more than two months now.

“The responding is more of a recent thing, started just a few weeks back, not too long before we ran into you. It’s weird and you’ll probably think I’m a crazy zombie sympathizer even more than you already do, but I swear he’s learning. Or relearning. Something.”

Ichigo shook his head, half scoffed. “Three weeks ago I would have chocked you up to being batshit insane, but not now. I’ve seen it. I’m not sure what he is or what’s going on, but he’s different.” 

Grimmjow was quiet for a long time after that. He cooked in silence, passed Ichigo’s portion over without a word. Their meal was just as quiet but for the subtle shift of the not quite living person in their midst as Shiro rested in what passed for sleep. The man hardly touched the only paltry meal of the day and after a few minutes of trying, he handed what was left over to his travel companion as he stood.

Ichigo accepted it, but he set it aside. “Save it for the morning. You’ll need it.” And watched as Grimmjow made his way across the room to sit down next to his friend. The zombie belatedly turned toward him with sluggish movements, not making a sound. Even from across the room, Ichigo could see the wince that crossed Grimmjow’s features as he motioned for the creature to go back to sleep.

That next morning, Grimmjow was up with the dawn, as usual, and acted as if nothing from the night prior had happened. Frost limned the windows and the dead, brown grass of the yards out front. He finished what he hadn’t eaten the night before on the go as they quietly stalked through the mostly deserted streets. Shiro trailed behind them, taking up his place at the rear of their small group and every so often Grimmjow would make a comment and the creature would groan a reply, or he’d look over his shoulder to make sure the creature was still there.

By midday, the sun was warm enough to melt the frost clinging to the shadows from the night before. The area around them was deserted and dead. Ichigo pushed the sleeves of his old, faded sweatshirt up as they walked at a measured but steady pace. “What about a button up shirt?”

Grimmjow rolled his eyes but there was nothing better to do, so he answered anyway. “I told you, he wont wear a shirt.”

Ichigo shifted the pack on his back, thumbs hooked through the straps. “Not even if it’s like ten sizes too big?”

“You see many options around? I don’t know, I doubt it, but even if he would, something that big and loose would just get in the way. The first time we ran into a hoard we’d be done for; it’d hinder his movements and there’d be too much extra fabric to catch onto.” Grimmjow paused, tossed a hand out to wave the suggestion away, “Or he’d get stuck somewhere and we’d have to backtrack to find him.”

“Well he was wearing one when you found him, right? What happened to that one?” Ichigo frowned as he puzzled the issue over. Really it only seemed to be an issue for him. Grimmjow wasn’t bothered by the ruin of the creature’s front, or if he was, he certainly didn’t act like it. And obviously Shiro couldn’t care less.

“Same thing that happened to his stomach.” Grimmjow intoned, staring blankly ahead of them. They’d hear if anything unpleasant headed their way.

Ichigo frowned a little harder, turning enough to glance over a shoulder at their following companion and the ragged destruction of his abdomen, before looking over at Grimmjow again. “He hasn’t worn one since?”

“Nope. Told you the first night that he wouldn’t let me put one on him. After I pushed everything back into place as best I could, I tried but he wouldn’t go for. I got as far as getting it over his arms and that’s about it. He tore it off himself and has refused to wear one since.”

“Maybe we could bind it with something instead, like a big bandage wrap.”

“Tried that too. I cut an old bed sheet apart and tried to wrap it around him. Didn’t want everything falling back out again, you know?”

But clearly that hadn’t worked either, if the lack of binding was any indication. Ichigo pondered the subject for a few, quiet minutes, his steps slowing until he pulled to a halt altogether. 

Grimmjow, looking confused, stopped a few steps ahead and turned back to watch him. The zombie caught up to stand motionless in the middle of the street they traveled, head tipping to one side slightly and the braid still in his hair falling over the shoulder of that side. Lifeless eyes scanned the area before he opened his mouth to push a confused sound from his dead throat.

Grimmjow shook his head in answer, equally unsure what was going on.

After a second of study, Ichigo started to pull the bag from his back, dropping it in the street beside him. “Maybe… you didn’t put it all back right.” He suggested, “Maybe he’s uncomfortable.”

“I’m pretty sure I told you he’s said that before.”

“Yeah, but.” Never mind that at the time of that conversation, Ichigo was still convinced the man was insane. “Maybe we could fix him, make him more comfortable.” He said, approaching the zombie and bending closer to get a better look at Grimmjow’s handy work.

The big man rolled his eyes again, dropping his bag and crossing his arms as he dropped to sit down on it. “Sure. If you think you can do a better job than I did, go for it, doctor Ichigo.”

“Kurosaki. It’s Dr. Kurosaki.” Ichigo pushed out a suffering sigh. “And actually, I think I can, asshole, I was studying to be a surgeon.”

Blue brows rose, “Really?”

“Yeah. I was in my last year of medical school, exams coming up.” He snorted a dry laugh and hesitated a second, before just kind of going for it and sinking fingers into the zombie’s exposed guts.

The creature, already glancing down at the person kneeling before him, lurched back half a step. Dry lips peeled away from teeth that were smeared in old blood and a snarl cut through the air.

Ichigo automatically jerked back so fast his butt hit the dirty pavement. Grimmjow did the opposite and jolted upright and forward, prepared to step between the two. When nothing more came of it, he forced a laugh into the tense air it created. There was no hesitation when he dropped a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “Guess he didn’t appreciate that.”

Ichigo tried to match the not quite amused laugh, but fell short. Slow to climb back to his feet, the attempt at humor dropped and was replaced by shock and intrigue and skepticism. “Did I- I think I hurt him…”

Grimmjow cocked a brow and glanced over at his zombie friend. It was true the creature still retained some sort of feeling. He reacted to touch, to pressure, but he’d never showed that any of the damage he’d taken caused him pain. He’d caught himself on fire once and if Grimmjow hadn’t smelled the burning cloth, he was still certain Shiro would have sat there and burned into nothingness.

He grunted a less than convinced sound. “I don’t know about that. He probably just mistook it for a threat. It’s not like we push on his intestines often, only other zombies do that.”

Ichigo shook his head though, “It- what’s left of the muscle holding everything in place- it clenched. It wasn’t just him that reacted, his body did too.”

Grimmjow shook his head in what was more of a helpless gesture than a negative. Truthfully he had no idea how the zombie functioned and to what extent, he simply rolled with it. Each new development was just as new to him as it was to Ichigo. “I don’t know. Did you hurt him or was he just reacting to something foreign being pushed into his ribcage?”

“I don’t know.” Ichigo half snapped, “Why don’t you ask him?”

Blue eyes rolled as the big man curled his lip in dislike, but he turned to his old friend and very sarcastically asked, “Shiro, did he hurt you?”

The zombie blinked, reacting half a beat late, then let out a litany of displeased growls and biting groans.

“Alright, alright.” Grimmjow hushed, hands up in surrender, “I get it, you didn’t like it. But did it hurt?”

Again he got nothing but displeased zombie sounds and a wheezing huff. He turned a pointed look at Ichigo, “It doesn’t work that way.” he told the younger, then clapped a hand back against Shiro’s shoulder and half tugged him closer to their resident doctor, “You just have to tell him what you’re doing first.” He settled on as explanation, hand squeezing against the bone in the creature’s shoulder. “Right, Shi? You’re good. Hold still this time.”

The zombie’s odd eyes costed over to meet blue, the aggressive sneer on his features lessoning, before he grumbled wordlessly and all traces of his defensive anger disappeared.

Ichigo tried again and this time, rather than the obvious and violent reaction from before, the zombie grumbled in his wordless way. Looking up at dull, lifeless features, Ichigo could have sworn there was a frown there, and maybe it held discomfort. Fortifying himself, he pushed on, using deft fingers to feel through the knots and ropes of innards. He pulled out a splinter of bone with a frown, dropping it on the ground at his feet. He found other things too, bits of leaves, general debris, probably just from the stomach cavity being so open for so long. Then he paused, feeling a little more thoroughly before he began shuffling coils around to get a look at what turned out to be damage. Internal damage so great would have killed a living person, yet the zombie still functioned, still stood there looking down at him. “It looks like part’s missing.” He finally spoke up, studying the jagged tears.

Grimmjow merely shrugged, “Wouldn’t surprise me. They got tore out by another dead. After that, hell, he’s got them caught on shit, tripped and pulled his guts clean out. I caught him chewing-“

“Ok-! I get the idea. Jesus.” He shook his head, shuffled the zombie’s innards around a bit, and stood back up. The act was thoughtless and casual when he wiped his gore-stained hands on his pants. “Maybe we should fix that. I’m sure we can find a corpse that wont mind becoming an organ donor.”

“Is that a good idea? I thought blood types and shit were a factor.”

Ichigo shrugged, “Yeah, but he’s already dead, so it’s not like we can kill him.”

Grimmjow matched his shrug, “Why the hell not.”

They continued after that, steps a little slow from fatigue and being on the move all day. Behind them, the zombie frowned as much as a zombie could, pale, grime smeared hands easing flat against the ruin of his abdomen where living hands had just probed. After a few moments, Grimmjow stopped and looked over his shoulder, “Come on, Shiro. Don’t fall behind.” 

Shiro dropped his hands, head tilting slightly, and began walking.


	3. Chapter 3

The days were blurring together. Time, aside from the cycle of day and night, was a useless thing. But the nights were colder now; a third and equally harsh lesson. After surviving the hoards and the emptiness of one’s own mind, the weather shifted. The seasons changed. The earth became an enemy of its own.

Shivering in the night, Ichigo flinched as another thump sounded on the roof of the overturned bus he and his companions huddled in. The bowed metal of where the domed roof met the wall above a row of windows was cold below him, the roof to his back. A faint smell like decay and old, rusted metal permeated the air, almost entirely unnoticed but for the bitter taste it left in his mouth that made his empty stomach roil.

They’d taken cover in the only place open to them that they could find. It had snowed the night before and while the day had warmed up enough to melt the thin layer that clung to the grass and the bodies of abandoned cars, the coming dusk had promised to be another frigid one. They hadn’t the energy to clear the buildings around them; a gas station, the handful of farm houses that clustered close enough to be considered a town. But continuing through the night wasn’t an option either, so when they’d spied the wreckage of a school bus, they’d silently agreed it was better than being exposed to the elements and the monsters hidden in the darkness.

The emergency door had the name of the local elementary school on it. Rock, paper, scissors had determined who’d enter first. Ichigo had clenched his teeth at the thought of what might be awaiting them and now, as he looked over the paltry fire they’d dared light in the middle of the vehicle’s shell at his companion, he was certain Grimmjow had somehow thrown the game on purpose. Ichigo had stood guard on the ground, watching as Grimmjow scaled the exposed underside of the bus, using the grease-smeared axel and a tire as foot and handholds, and heaved himself up onto the skyward facing side with a weak grunt. He’d carefully navigated the broken windows as he’d walked the length, peering in for trouble, before he’d pried the door at the front of the bus open and dropped down inside. 

Shiro had huffed a wheezing sound, gravitating toward the rear exit like he knew to expect his partner there, or like it would be the easiest way in if Grimmjow ran into trouble and he was needed. 

From inside, all had been quiet and only a few minutes later, Grimmjow opened the emergency door from the inside and beckoned them both in. He told Ichigo that the two little girls, pinned under a broken bench and hanging at a strange angle, had already been motionless when he’d come in, but the way Shiro sneered on his way passed them suggested otherwise. The zombie payed no attention to corpses, reserving his rare aggression for more threatening things.

Ichigo didn’t pry. Instead, he silently thanked the man for sparing him the horror of it. 

The thumping continued, moving down the length of the bus at an unhurried pace. He scowled tiredly and huddled further in on himself, tugging his dirty, threadbare sweatshirt tighter. The fire was barely large enough to produce a tiny pocket of heat around it, but it had been enough to attract attention. Grimmjow had cut away the cheap, thin plastic of a few of the seats to cover the windows of the back door to keep their company to a minimum. So far it sounded like just the one and so they ignored it, leaving Shiro to stand like a tireless sentry before the covered door just in case.

“There’s nothing in here.” Grimmjow grumbled, his breath fogging the chilled air. The fire reflected in his blue eyes but the look there was dull, worn out. They were both at the end of their reserves. “We need to get into that convenience store.”

Ichigo nodded, “In the morning. We can get Shiro to help us.”

Grimmjow looked up enough to glance passed Ichigo’s shoulder at the zombie as he nodded.

Eventually, they both ended up curled in exhaustion fueled sleep. The fire burned out sometime in the night to leave them even colder once the sun finally rose again.

The next morning, Ichigo climbed onto the side of the driver’s seat and through the open doorway. He spied the single undead monster that had pestered their restless night and turned in search. Finding a few loose pieces of broken glass, he carefully tugged the shards free of the frame and tossed them over the edge to further shatter across the gritty blacktop. The zombie hovering nearby jerked in that direction, shambling over and further from the backside of the bus.

Ichigo dropped back down through doorway and the two living and one not-quite quietly made their way through the bus and out the backdoor. Ichigo settled a hand on his companion’s shoulder in a silent claim as he eased around the corner of the wrecked vehicle. Grimmjow nodded and turned his attention around them, a hand held out to make sure Shiro didn’t go anywhere or draw the other zombie’s attention by mistake. 

The undead creature turned with a gurgling, hungry snarl as Ichigo neared it, reaching for him. He slid inside that reach and plunged the blade of a hunting knife through its eye socket. The zombie crumpled and fell to the ground at his feet. Even the simple task of that felt like a drain on his exhausted body, but he turned back toward Grimmjow and the two quietly, slowly made their way back a few blocks in the direction they’d come.

The storefront, if it could be called that, was a wall of dirty glass. Smears of old blood, dried black, stained here and there. Cracks fissured through it, but hadn’t been enough to shatter the glass. The two eyed it as they neared. They’d counted four within the night before; a perfectly manageable number under previous circumstances, but now, after having not eaten in more than a day and with the cold stealing their strength, it wasn’t so easy. And that was assuming they could keep it quiet. The streets seemed deserted for now, but if the one they’d attracted in the night was anything to go by, they weren’t all locked behind doors. Even just a few, attracted by the commotion of breaking glass or too much snarling, could easily prove their end.

Grimmjow rubbed a dirty hand across his eyes, blinking to refocus, as he stepped back from the window he was peering through. “I only see three right now.” He muttered.

A few strides away, Ichigo hummed a speculative sound, leaning a bit to try for a better angle as he held a hand against the glass to block the glare of the deceivingly bright sun. “I think, maybe, I can see a bit of cloth from behind one shelf.” Without power and lights, the back half of the small store was steeped in dark shadows. He pointed as Grimmjow neared him to peek through to where he was looking, “At the end of the candy aisle. I can’t tell if its our missing zombie or a display.”

“You remember what color the other one was wearin’ last night?” Grimmjow asked, moving further down the window to try for a better angle.

Ichigo shook his head.

“Me either.”

“We could try to draw it out.” Ichigo suggested, but he didn’t sound too fond of the idea.

“Nah. We’d risk them breaking the glass. Too much noise. Better to sneak in and down ‘em quietly.” He gave up after a moment and started back toward the front door. They hadn’t tried it the night before, but it would be unlocked. It was a twenty-four hour stop and the open sign was flipped in a mocking parody of welcome, the red of the lettering faded. Once at the door, his hand hovered over the handle, before he flattened himself against the glass door and tried to look up, into the space above it. “What’re the odds a shit hole like this has an automatic bell?”

A breath hissed from Ichigo’s mouth. “Slim.” 

Which meant it would have a manual one, hanging on the frame to catch the door whenever a guest opened it. Which in turn meant the bell would go off when they opened it. An automatic one would have died when the power cut out.

“You see one?”

“No, but it’s probably too close to the wall to see.” Grimmjow pulled back again, turning to survey the area around them. They might have to try to draw them out after all. “If we could find something to stand on, and a thin stick or something, we could maybe ease the bell away from the door as we open it. Keep it quiet.”

“But then one of us is perched on unsteady footing and there’s something blocking the entry for the other to help if they see us.” And they still didn’t know where the fourth zombie had wandered. If it was close, being quiet wouldn’t save them a skirmish anyway.

“Fuck.”

Ichigo nodded, but, “We really need in there.”

“Yeah.”

Grimmjow again turned eyes on his mute friend, a grimace creasing his features. He loathed sending Shiro into spaces like this, hated that it essentially amounted to using the creature as bait while he and Ichigo snuck by unscathed. How much damage could a zombie take before it couldn’t go on? A lot, he knew. As long as you didn’t damage the brain too badly, it could still function. But bodily damage could still down a zombie; a broken leg or spine, too many severed muscles or tendons. That kind of damage wouldn’t kill Shiro, at least he didn’t think it would, but it would keep him down all the same and Grimmjow wouldn’t -couldn’t- leave him behind. Nor could they carry him.

“Fuck it.”

Ichigo heard the warning words a second before the door was pushed open without ceremony. The bell above the door rang with a hollow, tin clatter. Grimmjow reached up to still it as quick as his reflexes allowed for, but the sound still seemed loud in the motionless air.

They both froze, listening and waiting.

Inevitably, the shuffle of heavy steps and the groans of zombies reached them.

Ichigo shot the taller a look, but pushed passed Grimmjow and into the gas station. Grimmjow held it for Shiro to shamble through after him, then reached up and pulled the bell off its mount so the door would close quietly. He pulled a heavy buck knife from his belt as he and Ichigo ducked down an empty aisle.

The groans continued, moving towards the front of the building as they moved towards the back and the shadows there. Once at the end of the aisle, Grimmjow went one way and Ichigo the other, as they began picking off the zombies.

Grimmjow was felling his second one, dragging his knife free from the shattered skull with a sick, sticky slurp, when a hand pressed against his back. He jumped, jerked around with his knife so fast Ichigo nearly ended up skewered on it. The big man flashed teeth and hissed a breath, “Dammit, Ichi-“

But Ichigo interrupted him, “It was a blanket.” He said quietly but urgently. “There’s still at least one more somewh-“

From a few rows down, snarling broke the quiet. A shelving unit shook violently and something heavy slid free to thud to the ground.

“Shiro-!” Grimmjow spun away from Ichigo, sprinting down the aisle to skid around the corner of it and toward the front of the building. Something crunched sickeningly and the acrid smell of freshly opened stomach cavity and the rotting contents filled the air.

Ichigo breathed a curse, darting after the man. He turned a corner, down the row Grimmjow had disappeared in, only to come to a fast stop, shoes sliding in sticky, half clotted, black blood. Intestines had spilled across the floor and in the middle of the mess, Shiro knelt like an animal, his teeth crunching on something. Dark, thick liquid smeared his features, his hands, the front of him. 

Grimmjow grabbed hold of the zombie’s upper arm and hauled him to his feet. “Dammit, Shiro.” He hissed, “Get that out of your mouth, did you even check to make sure it wasn’t your own?” He pried open the undead creature’s jaws as a frown tugged at pale brows and equally colorless hands rose to get in the way.

Ichigo gagged, despite there being nothing in his stomach and despite having grown used to seeing gore. He could almost hear relief in Grimmjow’s voice though.

“Give me a hand, Kurosaki.” The bigger man growled, bending to start sorting between what was Shiro’s and what wasn’t. At his feet, their fourth zombie lay motionless, half its head caved in and bits of dry hair and brain matter stuck against the bent metal of the shelf nearby.

Ichigo stared for a moment longer. “Is he- I didn’t know he-“

Grimmjow shrugged. “They all eat. Shiro just doesn’t eat living flesh. Or… He will, if I give it to him. I’ve seen him eat rats. He managed to catch a snake once. It was in a tank. Someone’s pet at one point. He doesn’t eat often though.” But with Grimmjow and Ichigo running so low on reserves, they’d been relying on the zombie more and more, until even Shiro needed to refuel, it seemed.

Belatedly, Ichigo shook himself and started helping Grimmjow untangle innards, a grimace on his face.

When they were done putting Shiro’s exposed guts back as best they could, Grimmjow straightened and motioned toward what was left of the body on the floor. “There. Finish up.” 

The zombie did so without further prompt, scrambling closer before dropping to his haunches to hover over the corpse. Pale fingers sank into long dead, rancid meat, ripping it free to shove it into his mouth. He barely chewed, only enough to crunch on anything too solid to swallow. A low, grumbling growl crawled from his lifeless throat, sounding not unlike a giant, undead house cat that had caught a mouse.

Ichigo gagged again and turned away, his empty stomach roiling with nausea that made him dizzy. “We need to eat too.” He muttered, “And we should probably have used that one as a donor.”

“Pick a different one.” Grimmjow said, moving off, “He likes that one.”

Before they did anything else, they both strode down the aisle containing a meager collection of canned goods and sealed bags. A few had already been opened, the half eaten contents beyond spoiled by now. Apparently, one of the zombies inside had been alive long enough to get hungry before the others got to it. It mattered little and had stopped mattering a long time ago.

They dug in with the vigor of starving men, but had enough self control and sense not to over eat. A can each, before they started filling the bags they carried. Their was a small rack of reusable bags near the counter and they filled a few of those too, gathering as much as they could carry with them. They even fashioned a bag that they could strap to Shiro. Might as well put him to good use, Grimmjow had said. Pack mule was better than bait.

Still devouring the undead it had killed, Shiro crouched in the middle of the floor, oblivious to them and the small celebration they were having. Not facing immediate starvation was a worthy enough event.

They pulled cans of fruit and beans and vegetables from the shelves to add to their bags, bottles of clean water from one of the glass fronted refrigerators. It wasn’t cold, of course, power had gone out months back, and the juice, milk, and other drinks smelled sour and sickening when the doors were swung open. But they ignored it. Clean water was hard to come by. Lastly, they started collecting other things of use; the blanket Ichigo had seen, decorated with a small town sports team’s logo, the matching sweatshirts. There was a stash of lighters on the counter at the front and Grimmjow stuffed one into his pocket, before closing the box and putting the whole thing into a bag.

Ichigo stopped him long enough to grab two free. One he put in his own pocket, the other he left sitting on the counter. He shrugged at the curious look it earned him, “Karma. Just in case someone else stumbles through and needs it.”

Grimmjow grunted, sliding down to sit in front of the counter, leaning back against it. He twisted a bottle of water open and drank half in one go. Even as he sat there, knowing they were both exhausted, he said, “We outta get out of here before we lose the daylight.”

Ichigo winced, gingerly moving to sit beside him, looking out the window at their right. The streets still looked empty. “We could find a house and hole up for a while.”

Grimmjow shook his head. “Snow’s coming. There’s not enough in this town to get us through the next few months if we get snowed in.” And without a working vehicle, it wouldn’t take much to force them to stay out of the elements.

Ichigo nodded, knowing it was true. But they could rest a while longer, let Shiro finish his meal. After the silence had stretched a few minutes, Grimmjow chuckled a dry laugh and Ichigo looked over with arched brows.

The big man was staring off down the aisle he faced, a far away look on his handsome but tired, dirty features. “My old man used to say if the world ever went to shit like every doomsday conspirator thought, I’d survive. He’d say it with a reluctant smile every time he tried to ground me and a cop would deliver me home, or I managed to break the most recent lock he’d put on my door.”

Ichigo started at that, but Grimmjow continued.

“I think I want to prove him right. There for a while, I wasn’t so sure. Still not, maybe, but…” He trailed off with a nod.

Ichigo decided not to ask and possibly taint the memory. That’s all they had left of their old lives, of their families, friends.

Another half hour or so went by and Ichigo looked up when movement and shuffling steps caught his attention. Shiro ambled into view, lifeless eyes searching before landing on him as the creature shifted his steps to approach. “You finished?” A tilt of the thing’s head was Ichigo’s answer. At his side, Grimmjow hadn’t moved in at least twenty minutes, head leaned back against the counter, eyes closed and hands limp in his lap. 

He started to reach for the open bottle of water that sat between them, but changed his mind and quietly climbed to his feet. Under the counter, below the register, there was a bottle of glass cleaner and a rag. He wet down the dirt stained towel and walked up to Shiro to begin scrubbing some of the rotted blood from his features. It was more or less pointless, and whenever he’d previously tried to clean up the zombie a bit, he’d answered Grimmjow’s skepticism and harsh reprimands with logic; if they ran into other survivors, it would be easier to convince them of Shiro’s differences if he didn’t look like he fed on people. But in all honesty, he didn’t care much about that. A dead was a dead, especially one with its guts half exposed at all times. If they ran into other people, they’d have to learn the same way Ichigo himself had. No. Instead his reasoning was compassion. Partly for what Shiro had once been, but mostly for Grimmjow. He couldn’t imagine what seeing the shell of a man he’d once loved must be like. He hoped that keeping some semblance of civility about the creature might ease Grimmjow in some way, if only a little. It was ridiculous, he knew, and so he said nothing.

When he was finished -Shiro standing before him with patience only a nonliving thing could have- he turned back to where Grimmjow dozed and used the toe of his shoe against the sole of the man’s boot to stir him.

Grimmjow frowned, a hand automatically gravitating towards his knife even as he woke up, quiet and still. He blinked up at Ichigo for a moment, then began levering himself to his feet. “Shit. How long did you let me sleep?” 

“Not long.” Ichigo assured, “Just until Shiro finished eating.”

They left as soon as Grimmjow had straightened to his feet, each of them slinging a bag over their shoulders. They helped secure the third to Shiro as the zombie diligently stood by, waiting and quiet. They paused outside long enough for Grimmjow to survey the streets beyond while Ichigo used the rag and what was left of the window cleaner to scrub the word ‘CLEAR’ across the dirt smeared storefront for the next group of weary travelers that might stumble through. 

Trudging through the meager parking lot, they eyed the bodies of dust and grime smeared cars. Grimmjow reached behind himself and deftly pulled his friend’s sword free, shrugging when Ichigo looked over at the soft sound the metal blade made. The weapon was useless in close quarters like the aisles of the small store. On the open streets, though, it had saved their skin more than once and it saved time, which could be just as important when facing multiple assailants or the limits of their energy.

The blade shone in the sun and the zombie dully glanced over at it for a moment. Every time Grimmjow drew it, it seemed to elicit at least a faint, muted response. Ichigo had commented, days ago by now, that it almost seemed as if the sword sparked some sort of recognition in the creature, triggered some instinctive memory, maybe. A familiarity. Grimmjow’s features had twisted, before he’d uttered a single, harsh, “Stop.”. Finality had rang in the low tone; a warning. It had been a demand, but a plead also. He refused to let himself hold on to the misguided hope that his friend was still in there somewhere. It invited too much pain. It threatened ruin.

“It’d be nice if we could get one of these cars running.” Ichigo said as he looked through a passenger window, then tried the handle after nothing tried to get out at him. It was locked.

Grimmjow grunted his agreement, heading for the next car. “Can’t hurt to check.” He decided, Shiro trailing behind him with that dullness to his movements. “I don’t suppose you know how to hot wire a car?” He asked Ichigo over the top as he pulled the driver door open.

Ichigo shook his head, “If either of us was going to have that skill, I would have guessed you.”

Grimmjow scoffed, “What do you take me for? Some kind of delinquent?” He dropped heavily into the driver’s seat and began rummaging around for a set of keys, opening up the glovebox. Without looking up, he spoke around the barest hint of a smirk that curled his lips, “I tried once, on a dare from that asshole.” He motioned to where Shiro stood beside the car he sat in, “Principal’s brand new car. I don’t even remember what kind it was.” He bent over the center council to flip down the passenger side sun visor, “He’d left his window open far enough for us to unlock it.” With a sigh, he sat up straight again, coming up empty handed, “I electrocuted myself and fried the starter. My fingers were numb the rest of the day, the principal was furious but couldn’t prove it was us. Shiro thought it was the funniest shit.” He shook his head as he climbed from the car and they resumed their search of the vehicles.

After a few minutes of the two coming up empty handed, Ichigo’s brow knotted, an idea coming to him. “Hey, what about the four we just downed? Surely at least one of them drove here. We should check the bodies.”

“Oh yeah, good thinking.” Grimmjow praised, grabbing the sword from beside the most recent car he was in the process of searching. 

They came away with three car keys, two of which had come from the same body, so probably a car that had been driven to the gas station and one left at home, wherever that had been. 

“Not much in the way of options.” Grimmjow said, thumbing over the symbol that marked the make of the car on one of the keys. 

Ichigo shrugged, “As long as one of them runs and has gas, I couldn’t care less.” 

Of the two cars they had keys for, one was a two door, pitiful excuse for a sports car, while the other was an old farm truck. They opted for the truck, thinking it would take the elements better if the snow finally stuck or if they were forced off road. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Ichigo held his breath as he stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine protested, sputtering before going out. On the second try, it caught and the old truck vibrated and rattled to life. The tenseness that had settled between the two fell away as a wide grin tugged across Grimmjow’s features and Ichigo laughed. It didn’t seem like much, but it was a victory.

They didn’t dare shut the engine off as Ichigo climbed from the driver seat, leaving the door hang open. He tossed their stuff in the bed as Grimmjow coughed, gagging on gasoline as he siphoned it from the other cars in the lot that were old enough not to have safeguards against siphoning. They topped off the truck’s half tank and filled a gas can from the station. The few that were in stock, despite that they didn’t have the gas to fill them, were dropped in the bed of the truck also, as was the air hose Grimmjow had cut from under the hood of a random vehicle and used as his siphon.

Ichigo left the other key sitting on the dashboard of the car they had opted to leave behind. 

“In case another survivor needs it.” Grimmjow said, nodding, before the other man had a chance to explain. It was such a simple notion. So human.

It took Grimmjow a few frustrating minutes to get Shiro to figure out how to get into the back seat and when the zombie was finally in, he had to push him back far enough to safely shut the door. He didn’t bother with buckling the creature in.

They played rock, paper, scissors to see who would take the first shift driving while the other rode in the passenger seat. Grimmjow won and climbed up into the driver’s seat. He shifted into drive as Ichigo closed the passenger door and pulled them out of the lot, onto the narrow street. Drawn to the noise, a few scraggly looking zombies shambled into view from down an alley. The two barely looked at them.

“Get some rest if you can.” Grimmjow said, glancing in the rearview mirro at the creatures as they turned into the street behind them. “I’ll wake you in a few hours so we can switch.”

Ichigo dropped an elbow onto the ledge of the passenger window and lowered his chin into his hand. The simple act of sitting in a moving vehicle was oddly comforting, like an illusion of a life long gone. He closed his eyes, feeling the coolness of the glass against his arm.

When he woke up, it was because of the odd, sliding motion of the truck. He jerked awake, scowling at the scenery crawling by. On the horizon, the sun was starting to dip low as the day sank into evening. It barely showed through the heavy, grey clouds. Around them, the ground was soft with a thin but fresh layer of snow. “You said a few hours.”

“I don’t want to stop. The road’s icy. The melted snow from last night is starting to freeze. If we stop, we might not get her goin’ again.” Blue eyes concentrated on the road ahead. Snow made the path their headlights cut through the dark hazy as it fell in quiet, lazy drifts, entirely indifferent to the danger it presented.

Ichigo turned in his seat, looking behind them. At some point in their drive, Shiro had shifted himself and now leaned back against the backdoor, a shoulder slumped against the worn down back of the bench seat. Ichigo’s eyes traveled passed the creature and out the window, but the town they’d left behind was out of sight.

“We were making good time until it started snowing.” Grimmjow said, lips thinning slightly when they caught another slick patch in the road and the tail end of the truck lurched sideways before correcting.

Ichigo turned forward again, “We need to add weight to the bed.”

Grimmjow nodded. But that wasn’t exactly a possibility right then.

“Hows the gas tank look?”

“Less than a quarter.” Grimmjow answered, eyes flickering down to the dashboard before returning to the road.

Ichigo grimaced, turning his attention outward, at their surroundings. It was looking like they were going to end up spending the night out here, after all. 

The bodies of abandoned vehicles dotted the roadside here and there, coated in snow. Some had been in serious wrecks, rolling them across the road or into the wide ditches that sat between the road and fields on either side. Broken windows yawned black and vaguely threatening, like caves that could have hid anything, as they passed them by at a slow but steady pace. “This isn’t a good place to get stuck for the night.”

“No, it’s not.” Grimmjow agreed. “I haven’t seen a building for at least an hour now.” Though in truth, with the coming darkness and the snow, it was hard to see what lay beyond their headlights.

The truck slid again as Grimmjow turned the wheel enough to ease them around a vehicle in the road. As they coasted by it, they could see hands pressed against the window, clawing in a desperate attempt to get at them. In the backseat, Shiro’s lip curled and a low sound growled from his throat.

Less than an hour later, the engine sputtered and Grimmjow took his foot off the gas. The truck was running on fumes, they both knew, and they could only sit there and wait as the engine gave out and they rolled to a stop. Without the throaty rumble of the engine and the headlights, they were suddenly plunged into the quiet darkness of night. The snow muted whatever sound might have carried to them; the rustle of the wind, the creak and groan of a car door that had hung open on rusting hinges for months.

They sat there quietly for a few long minutes, watching the night and its oppressive indifference to them.

“We still have some gas in that can in the bed.” Ichigo reminded, reaching for his door handle. “Even if we can’t get traction enough to get going again, at least we’ll have heat.”

In the backseat, Shiro lurched into motion with that deceptive speed of his, a pale blur in the dark. The creature growled, practically lunging at Ichigo across the middle council that sat between the two front seats, arms outstretched and teeth bared in a ghastly snarl.

Ichigo jerked away, twisting in his seat to face the zombie. His eyes were wide and his hand hovered over the knife at his belt. If there would have been room in the cab of the truck, he would have scrambled right out of the seat.

At the same time, Grimmjow twisted in his own seat to reach for Shiro, fully prepared to restrain his friend. His eyes landed on the knife Ichigo was ready to draw, “Don’t you fuckin’ dare-“ He started to growl out, but a heavy blow landed against the side of the truck, right behind where Ichigo had put his back to.

The young man jumped again, as the zombie outside pounded against the passenger window, leaving streaking handprints. It hissed and squealed from a ruined throat, the edges of its opened esophagus showing frost. Drool and old blood was frozen across its mouth and chin, hanging in suspended drops. Its lips were torn to show gnashing teeth behind the frozen flesh.

Heart pounding out of his chest, Ichigo stared at it for a moment longer, nothing but mere inches and cold glass separating his features from those hungry teeth, before his attention coasted back toward their undead companion. Grimmjow’s restraining grip had fallen away and one pale hand was wrapped around Ichigo’s raised, blocking arm but there was no malice in the hard grip. Sickly eyes were turned toward the monstrosity outside. Pulling in a calming breath, he reached for the window crank, “Does it seem like he’s getting more aggressive towards them lately?” He asked as conversationally as he could manage just then.

Grimmjow nodded mutely.

As Ichigo started to roll the window down, drawing a long-bladed knife, their pet zombie growled and grumbled and pulled at Ichigo’s arm. Whether he was trying to pull Ichigo back, or drag himself forward was anyone’s guess. “It’s ok, it’s fine.” Ichigo explained, trying to calm the creature before Shiro could crawl from the backseat and end up in his lap. “I know it’s there.”

With the window opened a few inches, he waited for the zombie to find the new opening and bring its face close to bite and chew at the glass, then he plunged the knife through the opening and into spongey, brittle bone. The wheezing, hissing cries stopped and the creature crumbled to the ground. 

The tight grip on Ichigo’s arm eased up, then fell away entirely as the zombie started to calm, his snarling turning into mild murmurs of groaning complaint.

Ichigo watched the creature a moment longer, before his attention briefly flickered to Grimmjow. The bigger man nodded slightly, finally easing the staying hand he’d shoved against Shiro’s chest away. 

“I’ll refill us.” Ichigo said, opening the door. He stepped over the corpse, then stopped and looked back down at it. Shivering in the cold, he bent and grabbed the body by the arms and dragged it around to the back of the truck. After a few minutes of struggling and jockeying around, he managed to lever it into the bed of the truck and grabbed the gas can. 

Half a dozen seconds that felt a lot longer than that later, he pulled open the driver side door. Grimmjow jolted slightly, turning towards him, before he frowned. “Move over.” Ichigo said, not skipping a beat as he started to climb into the truck, “It’s my turn to drive.”

“What’s with the dead?” Grimmjow asked as he slid over. He settled heavily into the passenger seat, spreading his legs out in front of him and leaning against the door. The glass window radiated the frigidity of the night around them, sending a chill down his spine as he rolled the hand crank back up.

Ichigo turned the key, scowling when the engine hiccuped and died again. “It’s half frozen and the abdomen looks intact. I figured it would be a good donor when we get the chance. And it’ll add some weight to the back for now.”

The truck finally coughed to life after two or three more tries and the two shared a grin before Ichigo shifted into gear. Some careful jockeying got the vehicle moving again as the snow continued to fall around them.

“If we come across a building-“

Ichigo nodded, but the surrounding area looked abandoned.


	4. Chapter 4

The gas tank was running low again when they pulled onto a slight raise in the road; a drainage ditch, Ichigo saw, and the channel that had been cut in the ground for the road to be built over. He slowed the truck, letting it coast to a stop at the very top of the rise. At his side, Grimmjow stirred. 

The big man hadn’t been asleep, but he’d been pretty out of it. Now, he straightened and frowned out the window, arms wrapped about himself in the effort to preserve whatever heat his body could generate. 

Ichigo waited for the appraising look to find him. “There’s a big, metal drain pipe below the road here. I haven’t seen any buildings, but this way we’ll be out of the wind and the open. And it’ll be defensible if we attract attention.”

Grimmjow’s frown deepened, but he nodded. It was sound logic. “Closed off enough, we might be able to risk a fire if we can find anything to burn.”

So they climbed from the vehicle, the cold ripping through their flimsy clothing to steal the air from their lungs. Grimmjow tugged the backdoor open and half pulled, half guided Shiro from the backseat. Hefting what gear they had that they thought they might need during the night, they began the descent to the dead field below the road’s level. Frozen water made parts of the ditch slick and, hidden below fresh snow, the ice was almost impossible to see. They both nearly went down more than once, before making it to the mouth of the massive pipe. 

Stooping to peer inside, Grimmjow scowled. “Looks empty.” He said lowly, a hand wrapped around Shiro’s arm to keep track of the creature. He carefully stepped inside. Even just hovering near the entrance, the bite of the wind was cut in half. “Better hope it’s not icy inside, too, or that fire’s not gonna work.”

They were careful climbing through the pipe, hunched over to avoid banging their heads against the top of it. Grimmjow released his friend half way through, before proceeding to the other side, getting a look at the night darkened field and anything that might surprise them, or close off their exit. Here and there, snow drifted around shapes in the frozen mud, but they could have been anything; rocks, dirt, debris, bodies. So long as none of them moved, it wasn’t worth worrying about. “Looks clear out this side, too.” Moving back to the middle of the space, he hunkered down close to the ground, where the wind cut off entirely, and absently reached up to tug Shiro down with him. “Sit.” He said in afterthought, as the creature did just that. 

Huddled together in the minimal cover the drainage pipe offered, the three listened to the wind and rustle of dried crops outside. With what they could find that was dry enough to burn, they made a small fire. It ran out of fuel after an hour and they spent the rest of the night cold and shivering in exhausted half-sleep.

The morning saw snow drifted around the entrances of their makeshift sleeping quarters. After a quick meal of cold canned food, they knocked through it and climbed the icy bank back to the old farm truck. The doors creaked in the cold and they sat a moment, rubbing hands together in an effort to warm numbed fingers. “What’re the odds this damn thing starts up again?”

“It’s almost out of gas, even if we do get it started.” There were a few cars in sight that they could try to siphon gas from, provided they could get it running, but it wouldn’t likely get them far.

Grimmjow grunted and made a motion to say ‘get on with it’, so Ichigo shrugged and turned the key they’d left in the ignition. The engine made a terrible grinding sound, then sputtered out. Standing beside Grimmjow’s open passenger door, their zombie companion growled in response to the sound. “Yeah, pretty shitty of it, huh?”

Ichigo huffed an amused sound as he tried again. Again the truck coughed and died. After three or four more tries, each sounding more pitiful than the last, Ichigo banged his fist into the steering wheel angrily, and leaned back in the seat. “Guess we walk.”

“Guess so.” He hopped from the truck, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up, and walked around to the bed of the truck to grab their stuff. Grimmjow pointed up the road where, about a mile or so off, two cars looked as if they’d wrecked into each other. “Lets see if we can get one of those running. If not,” He shifted his point out across the field that ran parallel to the road. “I say we head for the tree line. Use the cover against the wind, at least.”

Ichigo followed the gestures, nodding when it seemed as good as anything he could come up with. He slung his bag across his shoulder, glancing at the perfectly good corpse in the bed of the truck. Shiro’s damaged abdomen would have to wait. He couldn’t work out in the open in this kind of cold and they couldn’t drag the body with them. There would be others. He affixed their extra bag to the zombie, and headed off towards the cars. 

It looked like it had been an accident because that’s exactly what it had been, and it looked fairly recent, too. The gouges and dents of the cars were fresh enough that the paint below the damage had yet to fade to match the rest of it, or collect anything more than some snow. There was still the faint ting of leaked oil to the air. The occupants of one car were clearly dead. A zombie with mild enough decomposition to show that it had once been a fairly attractive woman reached for them. One arm was twisted at a strange angle and the legs seemed to be unresponsive, but the damage didn’t keep the monster from crawling from the driver side to the passenger seat as they neared that side. The back held a few bags and a carseat containing little more than a gory smear.

“Must have died in the accident.” Grimmjow commented, eyeing the cracked windshield the woman was currently chewing and clawing at as they moved to inspect the second car.

The second car’s occupant was gone entirely, the door resting against the jamb but not latched shut. “You see any footprints?”

“No. Check under the car.”

“You think this just happened?” Ichigo asked, but he hunched down, keeping the car at arm’s length, and peered below it. “Nothing.”

“No, no car tracks either. But better not to be caught off guard by half a torso reaching from under, ya know?”

Ichigo nodded as he straightened again. He pulled the driver side door open, sliding into the cold car. The keys were laying on the floor in front of the driver seat and he bent to reach for them, fumbling slightly with frigid, numb fingers, before he managed to grasp them. When he pushed the key into the ignore and turned, the car didn’t even stir. No grinding, no coughing or sputtering met his ears. The lights didn’t even come on. He tried again, but the battery was beyond dead, likely killed off between the cold and the original owner trying desperately to get it restarted after the accident.

Straightening, he pushed to button to unlatch the trunk, and shook his head as he looked over at Grimmjow.

Grimmjow grunted, but wasn’t surprised. He headed back over to the first car, watching the dead within hiss and snarl at him. Hovering at his side and a step behind, his undead friend growled a vicious sound back, chest rising to pull in air to make the sound. Grimmjow absently held a staying hand out to keep him where he was, and drew his borrowed sword. Like usual, Shiro’s attention fell on the blade for a distracted moment, before going back to the threat at hand.

Grimmjow threw the car door open, taking two quick steps back as he watched the monster within. The zombie practically lunged through the opened door and as it did, Grimmjow took a single step towards it, sword coming around. Old blood and gore splattered across the car’s interior in a dark, goopy streak. The head bounced once on the frozen, snow covered blacktop, and rolled into the ditch. The body fell in a heap, twitching and jerking for a moment before falling still. 

Grimmjow watched it a second, then casually stepped over the corpse and began searching the car. The keys were in the ignition but his hopes weren’t high. A few attempts showed the vehicle to be just as dead as the other; no surprise with them sitting in the open and cold. 

After searching the two vehicles, they came away with very little they could use. One car looked like it had already been rifled through, suggesting again that someone walked away from the wreck.

“You think they made it?” Ichigo asked, joining the bigger man on the side of the road.

Grimmjow shrugged, entirely unconcerned, since it was unlikely they would run into whoever it was, whether they were still alive or not. “Sure. Impossible to say how long or how far they made it, though. Still headed for the woods?”

Ichigo grunted at the answer, and nodded, setting out down the steep side of the ditch.

“C’mon, Shiro.” Grimmjow absently instructed, waving the creature onward, as he followed at his traveling partner’s side.

The field was uneven and furrowed below the blanket of snow. Each step had to be measured and the several miles of rough, broken ground took longer than they would have liked. Being in the open left them exposed to the bitter, cold wind, but at least they could see anything coming at them as well as it could see them.

They made it to the tree line well after noon, shivering and cold, the temperatures sapping their energy. Wading into the woods with the intentions of making a small fire and warming up before they continued deeper, now that they were out of the wind, they hadn’t gone far when they came across a cleared swath. Unkept, dried grasses and weeds poked through the snow, but the trail was distinctly wide enough for a vehicle; an old farm track or a driveway. The two shared a single, silent glance, before turning onto it to follow it deeper into the woods. The idea of a fire was quickly left behind at the prospect of spending the night in a barn, or even a house.

After a while of trooping through the snow, their surroundings silent but for the soft crunch of shoes on half frozen snow, Grimmjow slowed. Ichigo pulled up too, glancing at his companion, but Grimmjow was turned around, an exasperated look on his features. At their backs, where Shiro should have been; nothing, and only two sets of footprints. He pushed out an annoyed, hissing breath, and set off back the way they’d come.

Ichigo followed, thinking he might have detected a hint of worry in that breath. “Do you think he can freeze too solid to move out here?”

“Don’t say that.” Grimmjow growled in response. “If he does, we’ll have to carry him.”

“At least the tracks are easy to follow in the snow.”

Grimmjow grunted.

Doubling back, they found their companion close to a quarter mile in the direction they’d come from. In the snow, it was a long trek and lost daylight. The zombie was crouched over a half snow covered form, tufts of brown fur visible through the light dusting.

“Is that a deer?” Ichigo scowled through the glare of the sun reflected on the snowfall.

“Looks like it.” Grimmjow muttered at his side, then, louder, “Shi! What the hell, man, why are you just sitting there? We almost left you behind.”

The zombie growled, hands smeared in frozen gore. His teeth ground against ribs and sickly, gold eyes lifted, but the creature made no move.

“Come on, we’re losing daylight.” Grimmjow instructed as they neared. But still the zombie didn’t move from his crouch. The muscle of his body tightened for a brief moment, before he relaxed again and issued a litany of growling groans. Blue brows furrowed, “Are… Are you stuck?”

“What?” Ichigo rushed the few strides that still sat between them and the kneeling zombie. He dropped down beside the creature and his snack, getting a closer look. The zombie apparently created just enough body heat to soften the tissue and the frozen innards of the carcass but not enough to keep it from refreezing, or to keep himself from freezing to it. The skin of his fingers looked raw where he’d torn into frozen flesh and the extreme temperature had damaged tissue, but what was more concerning was that, amongst the gnaw marks and caved in ribs, the zombie’s blue tongue had curled into guts only to find the smoothness of a metal arrow shaft that looked to have been an old injury, with skin and muscle grown around what little bit of it still protruded above the animal’s shoulder. Too busy trying to chew through ice crusted skin and flesh, the zombie apparently hadn’t noticed the dilemma he was in. 

“He’s frozen.” Ichigo deadpanned.

“You gotta be shitting me.” Grimmjow muttered, wrapping a big hand around the zombie’s arm to heave. 

Shiro lurched when he was tugged back, but the deer carcass came with him, dragging through the dead grasses and the snow that sat atop. He snarled his disapproval, hands pushing at the deer before he reached for the grip Grimmjow had on him.

“It’s not working.” Ichigo said, “It’s not working, you’re just going to twist something and hurt yourself or him.”

At his voice, the zombie’s eyes flashed in his direction again. Then dropped the look at the shining handle of the old hunting knife jutting from his belt, the layers the human wore tucked behind it for easy access.

“You gotta better idea?” Grimmjow asked, releasing his hold and tossing a hand up, clearly exasperated by the situation and its ridiculousness. “What are the odds that he’d find the one dead animal out here that happens to have metal stuck in it? We can’t leave him. And he obviously can’t carry the damn thing with him or he would have just dragged it while he followed.”

“I don’t know, but we have to come up with something.”

While they discussed it, Shiro reached out a hand, fingers outstretched.

Ichigo caught the movement and automatically sidestepped out of the way of reaching hands.

Pale fingers closed around nothing and the zombie grumbled. 

Grimmjow glanced at his friend, then at Ichigo, before he realized what the creature was reaching for. “Oh, good thinking, Shi.” He started reaching for his own knife, “Zombies don’t need a tongue anyway and we need to find cover before nightfall.”

He half drew the knife before Ichigo was on him, hands circling around his wrists. “You can’t cut his tongue out!” The smaller refused in shocked tones, “We’ve been talking about putting him back together, not tearing him apart further.”

“No, you have been. He’s dead, he doesn’t talk. He doesn’t need it.”

“Jesus, he’s your friend, Grimmjow. You can’t just cut him apart.”

A rattling sigh escaped the zombie in question as he watched the two bicker of the moral standing of cutting body parts from a monster. He planted his feet against the ground under him and jerked back with all his strength. The deer carcass lurched half a pace with him and he again reached for the knife tucked into Ichigo’s belt.

Distracted as they were with arguing each other, the two didn’t even notice until the sound of grinding and cracking caught their attention. Ichigo’s hands dropped to his now empty belt as his head jerked around.

They both stared in a state close to awe as Shiro cut the flesh of the deer away and stood up a few moments later, tufts of fur and bloodied strands of meat hanging from his mouth. He absently chewed, the half frozen deer meat crunching in his mouth, and pulled what was left of the arrow out of his mouth when he’d worked it loose. He blinked, pausing his chewing when he realized he was being watched, before continuing, dropping the arrow. 

A set of blue eyes and a set of brown glanced passed the creature and down at the deer, where a knife had roughly hacked the dead flesh away around where Shiro had been stuck, scraping a shining scar across the metal of the old arrow shaft.

A second later, Grimmjow threw up a hand and turned to head back in the direction they’d been headed originally. “I can’t fuckin’ believe it. Outsmarted by a fuckin’ zombie.”

Ichigo mechanically accepted the knife that was nudged clumsily against his hand. He fell in line behind Shiro as the creature followed his friend, still chewing at stringy, dead flesh.

 

By the time they came upon the abandoned farm house, the sun was beginning to set. The gravel drive that led to the front was overgrown with dead weeds that peeked from the layer of snow coating it. The tracks of a rabbit crossed the otherwise pristine snowfall and the two paused, both thinking the same thing; the odds of being able to catch and kill a rabbit who’s tracks they had no way of knowing the age of.

Ichigo sighed and stepped across the small trail, closer to the house. “At least we’ll have somewhere warm to spend the night.”

“Yeah.” Grimmjow gave one last look in the direct of the tracks disappeared, as if he’d possibly be able to see the rabbit hiding in the trees somewhere. He dragged the toe of a boot through the tracks as he crossed them, hand automatically reaching up to settle readily against the handle of his sword. “You think it’s occupied?”

“If so, they’re probably long dead.” 

The boards of the front porch creaked as they climbed the half-dozen steps. Grimmjow came up alongside a window a few meters from the door and shaded his hand against the glass as he peered in. He was greeted with sight of exactly what one would expect from an old farmhouse. Flowing curtains blocked part of his view. The furniture he could see was outdated and mostly floral print, the carpet faded. A wooden end table sat pushed against the arm of a couch, dust covering its once polished surface. A coaster sat on the table, pulled from a stack of others that weren’t in use. The glass sitting on the coaster was dusty, with a water ring of dried, crusted left overs from whatever liquid had been left to sit and eventually evaporate away. After a quiet moment, he dropped the hand from his katana and tapped the window. Still nothing. Pulling away, he glanced over at Ichigo and shrugged a shoulder. 

Hand on the doorknob, Ichigo hesitated, glancing over at the big man again. “If there are any in there, that sword is going to be too long for such tight quarters.”

Grimmjow’s features twisted slightly, but the point was valid. He drew a knife.

Ichigo drew his own and twisted the knob, only to find it locked. He frowned, trying it again, before he stood up on his toes and began feeling along the top of the wooden doorframe. Coming up empty, he stepped back to study the porch, then moved over to where an antique mailbox hung on a post that supported the overhang. Reaching within, he pulled out a spare key with a smirk, the metal painfully cold in his already numb fingers.

The door swung open on heavy hinges and Ichigo crept forward into the silent house, pausing a few paces from the door to listen. Behind him followed Shiro, and Grimmjow after the zombie. They listened to the sounds of the house; the gentle creak of an old weathervane mounted on a tall roof, the slight whistle from a leaky window. The place seemed quiet.

The two living shared a look, and split up to check the house room by room. Ichigo headed for a wide, low-ceilinged arching doorway that led to a dining room, kitchen and pantry, while Grimmjow, with Shiro in tow, headed up a set of narrow, creaking stairs.

Once at the top of the staircase, he was faced with a hallway lined with closed doors. Grimmjow eyed the space, then turned to his companion. He braced a hand on the zombie’s shoulder, pulling him around so that he was sure he had the creature’s attention, but gold and black eyes drifted down the hallway.

Grimmjow snapped his fingers, earning a blink as the creature’s gaze snapped back to him and pale brows furrowed slightly. “Pay attention. Do not engage anything, got it? If you find something, make some noise. Let us know. But don’t get yourself torn up, ok?”

The expression on pallid features remained the same and the creature tilted his head slightly, the braided tail of his hair falling over one shoulder. 

Grimmjow sighed a long-suffering breath and released Shiro’s shoulder. “Take the right side, I’ll take the left.” Not that Shiro knew the difference between right and left anymore, but a guiding nudge in the right direction sent the creature on his way.

Downstairs, Ichigo picked his way through the kitchen, beginning to realize something wasn’t quite right. He’d yet to find any evidence of zombies or other inhabitants, but the house had clearly been raided at some point. Opened cans and boxes of foodstuffs sat upon the counters, the leftovers and unopened items stacked in neat rows upon a table meant for six. Utensils littered the sink, looking a little fresher than he thought they should. His hand tightened on the handle of his knife as he eased his way towards the back of the room, where the pantry door sat just barely ajar.

Barely twenty minutes after they’d split up, a ruckus of snarls and shouts went up, filling the house. One voice was easy to pick out; their undead companion’s vicious snarling threats. But the others were foreign. Ichigo jumped at the unexpected loudness, than turned and bolted for the stairs. He was halfway up when Grimmjow came skidding from a room, wet boots sliding on the hardwood flooring. 

The big man looked first to Ichigo, than down the hall, and took off in that direction, Ichigo on his tail.

They turned a corner, throwing themselves into a room with weapons ready, to find that Shiro had backed two figures into a corner. A gun was leveled at the zombie, the hand holding it shaking.

Grimmjow all but threw himself at the wielder, knife ready in a reverse grip, but he froze half way there when the gun didn’t automatically snap to him instead of his undead companion. He bared his teeth, all agitated, hulking aggression. The grip on his knife was white knuckled.

“Shoot it-!” A woman in ragged clothing hissed where she half hunkered down behind an equally ragged looking man, who held the gun.

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare!” Grimmjow snapped, edging a step closer to his friend. With his free hand, he motioned for Shiro to back off, but the zombie ignored him, dead eyes trained on the two strangers and a snarling, airy growl nearly constant from his throat. “Shiro, back off.” But still the creature didn’t move. The knife pointed at the man with the gun, “Shoot him and I’ll kill you, I swear I will.”

“Wait, wait!” Ichigo slid into the room, coming up along side Grimmjow slowly, hands in the open. “Lets slow down a second.” He settled a hand on Grimmjow’s knife arm, trying to ease the weapon from its clearly threatening position, with no such luck. There was no doubt in Ichigo’s mind that the big man was truly ready to see his threat through. There was no hesitation to the steady set of his shoulders, the ready stance he’d placed himself in. His handsome features were hard, sharp, and fiery. “Nobody needs to get hurt, there’s too few of us left as it is.” A little quieter, he added, “They’re just scared, Grimm.”

“Tough shit, we’re all scared. You don’t survive by actin’ it.” And with that, he shrugged from under the hand on his arm and crossed the few paces still between himself and the two strangers. He stepped right into the path of the gun, putting himself between it and his friend. “You wanna kill him, you gotta go through me.” He growled out, glaring the man down. When the man did nothing but shuffle a step back, bumping into the woman, and stuttered a few uncomprehending sounds, blue eyes narrowed and Grimmjow took a resolute step forward, until the barrel of the gun was flush with his chest. “The gun’s not even loaded, is it?” He waited half a second for an answer, before demanding with irrational anger, “Is it!?”

“I-it is! I’ll shoot, I’ll–“

“No it’s not.” Grimmjow’s free hand snapped up to close around the man’s wrist and twist. The stranger yelped and the gun fell from his numbed fingers. Grimmjow pressed his knife to the man’s throat, sneering, and heard Ichigo behind him jerk a quick step forward, but before the smaller could try to intervene, Grimmjow yanked the knife away and sheathed it. Staring the stranger down, he pulled the gun’s slide back to find the chamber empty. He ejected the clip, and found that empty, too. “Where’s the rest of the ammo?” He demanded, slamming the clip back into place and tucking the gun into his belt. All he got was stammering. 

Standing a pace behind, Ichigo could see the rattled state of mind his companion was in. The two survivors they’d found looked terrified, and for good reason. Never had he seen Grimmjow lose it like this, but he hadn’t seen Shiro in real danger yet, either. Whenever the creature faced off against dead, Grimmjow inevitably cut down any problems coldly, with hurried but calm intensity. This was different. This made Ichigo think there’d been an incident with other survivors before. He wondered, not for the first time, but only very briefly, what had happened to the zombie’s front.

Before the anger could go further, Ichigo retook his place at the big man’s side. He again dropped an easing hand on the man’s arm. “Grimmjow.” There was little pushing room in his tone, not that he thought he could command the man to do anything, but there was sternness there all the same. “Grimmjow, listen.” He put just enough pressure against the man’s arm to make his intent to back Grimmjow away from the other two obvious. He was mildly surprised when Grimmjow actually followed the suggestion, though blue eyes were reluctant to stop glaring daggers. “They’re people, Grimmjow, living people.”

“I don’t like them.”

“They didn’t know any better. They didn’t know Shiro’s not a threat.” The zombie was snarling again, teeth bared, hands clenching and unclenching readily. Ichigo frowned.

“He is, though, Ichigo, that’s what you’re not seeing.” Grimmjow made no effort to keep his voice down, to keep the conversation private. His zombie would have been more than enough to keep the strangers backed into their corner, but he watched them carefully anyway. “He doesn’t like them.”

“Well, they did pull a gun on him…” But even as he said it, Ichigo realized that wasn’t the issue. Shiro hadn’t responded this way to him, when the creature and Grimmjow had first cornered him in that barn they’d met in. He glanced over at the zombie and all his menacing posturing, then back to the two strangers. They didn’t look like much; bedraggled and dirty, they looked like they’d faired worse than Grimmjow and Ichigo had. Scrapes and cuts littered their arms where cloth had been torn away and worn through in frayed patches. There had been food stacked on the table downstairs, but they looked thin anyway.

Grimmjow’s line of thinking seemed to have been heading in a similar direction. “Are there others?” He demanded over Ichigo’s shoulder.

“No. No! Not anymore.” The man rushed to answer as Grimmjow started to take a hard step back towards him. He held his hands out in surrender, like he feared retaliation.

“Not anymore.” Grimmjow growled under his breath.

Ichigo nodded slightly, turning to look back at the two. “They’re just people, Grimmjow. Just trying to survive like we are… Take Shiro.” He suggested. “Finish looking through the place, make sure there’s no surprises. I’ll talk to them, ok?”

Blue eyes narrowed sharply.

“Ok?” Ichigo repeated again, with more emphasis, wanting to deescalate the situation.

“You better keep an eye on them, Ichigo.” 

“I don’t think they’re going to come after-“

“I don’t mean Shiro. I’ll be with Shiro, no one’s gonna fuck with him. I mean you. Lookout for yourself. There’s something off about them.” With that, he pushed away from Ichigo, grabbing his undead companion by the arm. He half dragged, half led the zombie from the room.

Ichigo waited until the door was slammed shut behind his traveling partners, before he turned back to the strangers.

Grimmjow tugged Shiro along with him until he’d crossed the hallway and entered another room at random; a bedroom, spare, by the looks of the generic painting on the wall and the ugly floral bedclothes. “Guess you’re stickin’ with me this time. I can’t believe I have to babysit you now.” He spoke mostly as if to himself, not particularly expecting much of a reply, though he earned a mild, grumbling retort. Crossing the room, he pulled open a closet door, pushing aside a few winter coats that looked as if they’d been forgotten there for years even before the world decided to crap out. “Aren’t you older than me? Shouldn’t this go the other way around?”

Shiro huffed a wheezing breath of exasperation, groaning his complaint as he wandered over to a window. 

“I know, I’m kidding. I didn’t forget your birthday.” He pushed the closet door shut, heard the latch of it, then immediately reopened it and yanked the coats from their hangers. Ugly though they may have been, they would be warmer than the sweatshirts he and Ichigo currently made due with. “This one would probably fit you.” He told the zombie absently as he threw the coat aside. “Too bad I’ll never get you to wear it.”

Finding nothing else of interest, he exited the room. “C’mon, Shi, we can rest when we’re dead.” He laughed at his own joke as dead, discolored eyes rolled and the zombie shuffled after him. 

Ichigo found the pair a few rooms down the hallway, riffling through the house’s owners’ bedroom. Shiro was pulling drawers from a dresser, dumping the contents out across the floor, but he didn’t look like he knew why he was doing it. Grimmjow was in the middle of lifting the mattress from the bed, when he looked up to see Ichigo enter. He immediately dropped the heavy mattress and straightened, crossing his arms with an expectant look.

Ichigo sighed and sat down on the old bed. He rubbed a hand down his features, but nodded slightly. “You’re right.” He finally said, though he hated it. “You’re right. There’s something off about them. I don’t know. Maybe if the world wasn’t the way it is, maybe they could get help and come back from this. Maybe a little human company would do it, if we had time to- If we had time. I don’t know.” 

“What should we do with them?”

Ichigo shook his head. He didn’t know that, either. “I figured we’d want to stick around for a few days, rest up behind solid walls for a change. They’re weak and weaponless, I guess for now we just keep an eye on them. Leave them here when we’re ready.”

“Keep an eye on ‘em.” Grimmjow repeated, though it was exactly what he’d said earlier. He studied Ichigo’s features, the conflict there, the human desire to do what was right warring with the survival instinct that was maybe saying something different. “You think they’re dangerous, too?”

Taking a breath, Ichigo started to deny it, but Grimmjow was giving him a look like he knew exactly what Ichigo thought already. “I don’t want to think it, but… Yeah. I think they could be. They’re… unsteady.”

“The kind that sneak up on you in the middle of the night.” Grimmjow nodded slightly, then glanced passed Ichigo. “Shiro! Are you even looking for the key or just dumping old lady panties all over the floor? Guess you get to rest after all, you’re on guard duty tonight.”

Ichigo turned to glance over at the zombie, chuckling as Shiro froze for an exaggerated moment, then tossed the entire drawer in his hands aside. It thumped to the floor and slid against the wall. The zombie turned to glare at Grimmjow, hissing a loud complaint. “He’s getting very expressive lately.” He commented, “What kind of key are we looking for?”

“There’s a safe in the closet. Might just be an old farmer’s life savings, or it might be the rest of the ammo for the gun the other two found.”

“And you thought they might have put it under the mattress?” Ichigo gave the man an amused look. “It was heavy enough you were straining.”

Grimmjow threw up a hand, “Isn’t that where all old people put their valuables?”

“No, just where teenage boys keep their porn.” Ichigo cracked a smirk at the eye roll he earned.

Meanwhile, Shiro didn’t seem done yelling at his partner. He waded through wrinkled, discarded clothing, gurgling and groaning. He trooped right up to Grimmjow, until Grimmjow finally turned to him. 

“What? This isn’t what I told you to do, wha-“ His brow furrowed skeptically as the zombie held out a closed hand, palm facing down. Raising his own, Grimmjow watched, comically confused, as the zombie dropped a wadded up pair of underwear into his hand. Shiro turned to shuffle away as Grimmjow dropped the underwear on the floor with an offended snatch of his hand and a, “What the hell, Shiro!?”

Ichigo laughed, ducking at the glare sent his way, but even as he did, a metallic clattering upon the old, wooden floor caught his attention and he pointed.

Grimmjow bent and picked up an old, iron key. “You devious little shit.” He accused his undead friend as he came up with what they’d been looking for. 

Ichigo, still covering his amusement, half whispered, “A zombie just played a practical joke on you.” He earned another glare as Grimmjow went to the closet. 

Pausing as he knelt before the old safe, Grimmjow glanced back to study his friend as the zombie curled up in the corner of the room. It was hard not to notice the changes the creature was undergoing. Shiro seemed more alert these days, less spaced out and like he was functioning on autopilot. He seemed to think, maybe nothing complex, but enough so that the living people around him were noticing. And he was eating more often, and expressing emotion more strongly. His anger was hotter and more explosive, if nothing else.

Shaking his head slightly, Grimmjow turned back to the task at hand. The key Shiro had found was the one they were looking for and the small safe clicked with a hollow sound as the lock released and the door swung open. He pulled out a heavy box first, disappointed to find it full of old, no doubt valuable coins. A small stack of cash, wrapped in a rubber band, was next. He dropped it to the floor without a second look. In the back, however, he found three more boxes; two cases of shells for the handgun he’d taken from the strangers, and a case of rifle shells. He turned to Ichigo with a wide grin.


	5. Chapter 5

They found the missing rifle in a locked case at the end of the hall. The key to the safe opened it, though, and the gun came with them as they searched the rest of the house. Their two strange, not-quite stable neighbors seemed to be the only people within the house. After a long day of walking and trying to stay warm, by the time the sun had officially sank below the horizon and night crept up with clouds and the promise of more snow, Grimmjow and Ichigo roused their undead companion. 

Shiro started awake uncharacteristically, having been in a deeper sleep than seemed his usual rest. Grimmjow eyed him a moment, before motioning for the creature to follow them. “We’re spending the night downstairs.” He told the zombie, “so we can keep an eye on the other two better. Make sure they don’t come or go unnoticed, or bring anyone else in. Got it?”

Shiro hummed a sound that seemed mostly like an affirmative.

“Good enough.” Grimmjow told him, then turned back to Ichigo. Together, they dragged the mattress from the bed, flipped it upright on a side, and began heaving it from the room; one pulling and the other pushing. They shoved it down the staircase, watching as it bounced from the walls, before making it to the bottom to sag half in the stairwell and half out in the open space of the sitting area.

Ichigo had decided there was no point in wasting a perfectly good mattress when neither of them had slept in a real bed in months, and Grimmjow had wholeheartedly agreed. So used to each other at that point, the idea of sharing the mattress wasn’t even brought up. They ate together, they slept side by side. One scarcely had a moment that wasn’t witnessed by the other.

Trotting down the stairs after it, Grimmjow kicked the mattress the rest of the way into the room and watched it flop to lay flat. After clearing the space of furniture, together they dragged it to the far side of the room and pushed it into a corner, where they wouldn’t be as easy to sneak up on in the middle of the night. 

Shiro slinked into the room after them, glancing around and taking inventory of where everything was at. Without needing to be told, he selected a post near the stairwell, where he’d be able to see any comings or goings from the front door or from upstairs, with the sitting room and his companions at his back, and made himself comfortable, head tilting in a spaced out, but awake way.

Ichigo ran back upstairs and grabbed as many blankets as he could find. Without power, the house was still chilly. He absently draped a thin sheet around their zombie friend’s shoulders on his way by and Shiro mumbled wordlessly, glancing up and over at him, but he didn’t shrug from the fabric.

In answer to the look he got, Ichigo shrugged, and dropped the stack of bedding onto the mattress. He’d raided the closet in the master bedroom, but left what had been in the spare room for the other two. Hopefully it would be taken as a sign of goodwill and they’d be smart enough to take that room for themselves and it’d be a quiet night. Regardless, he’d come away with a decent stack.

At his side, Grimmjow carefully laid the sword, still in its scabbard, down parallel to the mattress. He pulled the sweatshirt he’d been wearing longer than he could remember over his head and dropped it to the floor beside the sword, followed by the knife he kept at his belt, leaving it lay within easy reach. After a moment of what might have been slight hesitation, the tattered shirt he’d been wearing for months on end joined it, then his boots. 

Ichigo nudged at him with his foot to get him to move over when the big man laid down on the side of the mattress facing the open room.

Grimmjow shook his head as he crossed his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. “Nope. You get the wall.”

“When did we decide that? I’m not-“

“If those two try anything, you’ll hesitate. I wont.”

It was all the convincing Ichigo needed. The bigger man was right, after all. Ichigo would do what needed to be done, of course. He had in the past. But not before he exhausted his other options first. He rolled his eyes, but stepped over his partner and lowered himself onto the bed, rolling onto this stomach and pulling the blankets up over his shoulders. After he’d gotten comfortable, he sighed. “This is nice.”

“Mm.” The sound could barely be called an answer, yet it was an agreement all the same, as fatigue and the near-bliss that came with finally being warm and comfortable and at rest dragged Grimmjow into sleep. 

Ichigo, rolled onto his side to put his back to the wall and face Grimmjow, wasn’t far behind. Enveloped in blankets and the shared, living body heat of another person for the first time in what seemed like forever, it was the most normal he’d felt in a long time. When he closed his eyes, it was easy to enjoy, easy to pretend the world wasn’t dying.

Sometime throughout the night, Grimmjow stirred awake slowly, quietly. Ichigo, a little caught up in the unusual but welcome circumstances, watched him, watched the way the man’s brows furrowed and the previously sleep slackened muscle below him began to tighten, to ready. It amazed him that he’d gotten this far before he’d woken the man. Grimmjow’s hand inched to the buck knife at his side, settled atop the stack of clothing he’d stripped from. But before his fingers could close around the handle and the weapon could be brought up, Ichigo dropped a hand over his wrist and stayed him. 

Blue eyes snapped open, alert and awake and colder than Ichigo had yet to see the frigid color look. Recognition flashed through handsome features a moment after ready hardness, “What the hell are you doing?” The big man demanded in the dark room, voice a little rougher than usual from sleep.

Ichigo sat straddling his waistline, thighs around his hips, knees to either side of him. Shirtless in the dark, there was a very slight flush to his features below the shaggy line of his unkept, wild orange hair. It would have been difficult to say it wasn’t an appealing view to wake up to. Grimmjow glared up at him.

“What?” Ichigo half snapped, maybe a little defensive, a little embarrassed. But everyone had needs, right? They’d been stranded by the world, left to die in a lifeless waste with nought but each other for company. And here they were, sharing a roof, a bed. Walls. It was almost safe. He couldn’t find anything wrong with it. “I already know you like men, do I really need to say no homo?”

Grimmjow’s brow furrowed further, his lip curling slightly, “Get-“

Ichigo shook his head, head bowing for a moment as the bite left his tone. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” He said quieter, less forcefully. “I don’t want anything from you, I don’t want commitment. It’s just survival, right? That’s it, it’s not-“

“Get off.” Grimmjow demanded, rigid on his back, glaring up at the smaller.

“It doesn’t- Grimmjow, I’m not–“ He could feel, just barely, the slight stirring of what lay below him, only a couple pairs of pants in the way. He watched handsome, if dirt smeared and wane, features twist and he thought, for an instant, he’d get what he wanted. “A means to an end, nothing more.”

But just then, the other body in the room shifted and a tentative, unsure growl wheezed from the zombie’s throat. Blue eyes snapped to the side, catching gold, and Ichigo’s attempts at persuasion flailed and crashed.

“Get the fuck off me before I hurt you.” Grimmjow all but snarled, hands gripping thighs damn near hard enough to bruise, as he rolled and shoved.

Ichigo grunted as he was thrown to the side and hit the mattress beside the other. An indignant, angry scowl started to crease his brow and it was on the tip of his tongue to verbally rip into the man. Until he rolled over to turn his glare upon its target and saw the stricken, sickened look on his companion’s face, where Grimmjow sat with bowed spine. It wasn’t aimed at him, though, not really, and he knew that. 

Grimmjow scrubbed a hand down his tired features, trying to wipe away the pained expression he knew he wore. Shiro stared at him. He could feel it. It wasn’t comprehension in sickly, gold eyes, but it was still his friend’s visage. “It’s ok, Shiro, go back to keeping watch. He’s one of the good ones, remember? It’s ok.”

“I- I’m sorry.” Shame flooded Ichigo. “Grimmjow, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

The big man rolled over to put his back toward’s Ichigo as he laid back down, tugging a blanket up as he made a show of going back to bed.

Ichigo pushed a hand through his hair with a long sigh, watching his companion’s broad back for a few minutes. Eventually, he returned to his own half of the mattress and laid back down as well, prepared for a long night of awkward silence and disgruntled sleep.

A few hours later, however, with dawn not far off, he was awoken by a callused hand and a gentle but firm touch around his arm. Ichigo half sat up, coming around quick, like habit and survival demanded. “What’s-“

“Don’t say a word.” Grimmjow warned, his tone low and gravely. His touch didn’t linger. “Roll over.”

“What-“ Confusion twisted boyish features.

Grimmjow rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything and it’s not going to be intimate. If you still want it, roll over. On your stomach.”

Ichigo studied him for a long moment while he processed that. “But-“ His attention flickered off to the side, where Shiro sat in the doorway of the room with his back to them, weight still resting on one elbow.

Grimmjow shook his head in a single, barely there motion and it seemed to Ichigo more of a warning than a negative. He blinked, swallowed, then nodded. Without another word, he shifted onto his stomach, lifting his hips to help Grimmjow tug his jeans down.

It was exactly as Grimmjow said it would be; rushed, rough, not remotely affectionate or tender, but it did the job. It was twenty minutes of stifled groans and muffled grunts, of hands twisted into hastily scattered blankets and harsh breaths in heated air. When they were done, they both collapsed back onto their own sides of the mattress, panting, and returned to resting for what was left of the night.

With the sun rising, Ichigo sat up, sighing at the slight, lingering ache in his pelvis. It was a welcome change of pace from the aches and pains of living on the move and sleeping on the ground. He pushed the hair from his eyes and looked over to find the space beside him empty. Arching his spine in a stretch, he shifted to the edge of the mattress, grabbing his shirt as the blankets fell to allow cool air to sap his body heat. He pulled the shirt on as he stood, and glanced around the still shadowed room as he tugged the hem down over his torso. Shiro milled in the doorway that led into the main hall, front door to one said of him and the stairwell to the other.

Ichigo turned toward him, assuming Grimmjow couldn’t be far if the zombie was nearby. 

Shiro grunted a short sound, blinking as he watched Ichigo. The man was about to speak up, to ask what the sound was supposed to be for, despite knowing he wouldn’t get a clearer answer, but before he could, Grimmjow’s voice interrupted him.

“What, Shi?” The question sounded distracted. The zombie’s head turned to look down the narrow, short hallway that led towards the front door, before seemingly purposefully turning back toward Ichigo.

Ichigo didn’t think much of it, but he heard the big man curse under his breath and something thudded quietly. Grimmjow rounded the corner at the same time as Ichigo and the two nearly collided. “Well… Shit.” Grimmjow said, not sounding particularly upset. He shrugged and gestured, like he’d been caught, back towards the door, “I was hoping you’d sleep a little longer and I’d be able to tell you they’d snuck out in the night and this,” He gestured at Shiro, “moron hadn’t alerted us since they hadn’t come near.”

Ichigo frowned, confused, and shook his head slightly. “What are you talking–“ But his gaze traveled passed the bigger man, falling on bloodied bodies that had been dragged to the door. He stared, falling into a stunned silence. It took him a long minute to process what he was looking at, but he didn’t feel the horror he once would have. Part of that disgusted him, the part that so badly wanted to return to life before hell broke loose. “What did you do? Grimmjow, what-“

“Oh, don’t give me that moral high ground bullshit!” Grimmjow snapped, straightening defensively and losing some of his easy going stance. “I saved you from having to get your hands dirty is what I did. You said it yourself; they were dangerous. They weren’t right. They weren’t coming back.”

Watching the man straighten and switch attitudes like that, Ichigo stiffened. He barely kept himself from taking a backward step. It was the first time he realized how truly large Grimmjow really was. The man wasn’t the tallest Ichigo had seen, nor the broadest. He was no body builder, either. But he had a looming presence, an aura that towered like all those around him were small in comparison. “Grimmjow, they were people-“

“They were a threat, Ichigo! You tellin’ me you were comfortable sleeping under the same roof as them? Turning your back to them in a locked room? Being left alone with them?”

“No, but–“

“Where are the others, Ichigo? The ones they said were here. Any idea where they went or what happened to them? Why’s there still so much food piled up on that table?” He thrust a pointing finger down the short hallway, towards the kitchen, where cabinet doors hung open and cans had been piled onto the table. “Those cars out on the road haven’t been touched in weeks, Ichigo. Weeks. These two have been here weeks!”

Ichigo started to shake his head, meaning to interrupt again, but he was starting to see where Grimmjow was going with this. His mind revolted against it, even with all that he’d seen and lived through up to this point, he couldn’t accept what he was being told, nor the logic that led to Grimmjow’s conclusion.

“Now, maybe the old farmers that lived here were the doomsday type. Maybe they had a stock meant to last, but where’s all the extra guns? The bunker? The supplies? No, maybe that’s more like a single grocery trip’s worth out there instead.” Grimmjow lowered his arm, pointing at the dead man at his feet just behind him instead. “They weren’t coming back from that.”

“You’re not coming back from this, Grimmjow! Do you realize what you just did? You killed them! In cold blood- People, Grimmjow! You didn’t have to-“

“What would you rather I did?” There was a hard expression on Grimmjow’s features, but it wasn’t anger. It was more like resolve. “You wanted us sleeping with one eye open while we waited for them to come at us? Should I have waited until they had a chance to corner one of us alone? Should I have let them cut up Shiro?” He shook his head. “No, Ichigo, this was kinder on everyone. This was quick. When we leave here, they wont have to go after each other. They wont have to die a slow, painful death of starvation. They wont have to turn. They died human and if either of us ends up with a say in the matter, that’s how we’ll go too and you know it. I denied that choice to one man already, it’s not happening again.”

Ichigo, silent, shook his head again, gaze dropping to the bodies. What was he supposed to say to any of that? That Grimmjow was wrong? That they were going to bring these two with them and do what they could to save them? It was never discussed because letting them tag along wasn’t an option. They had been dangerous, deranged. During his talk with them the evening before, they’d looked to each other, than back at Ichigo like he was a thing to be survived, a conquest. He’d chocked it up to how Shiro, and then Grimmjow, had reacted to them, but maybe it hadn’t been that. Maybe Grimmjow wasn’t wrong. “Last night, you woke up to– And then you came to me afterward…”

Grimmjow nodded, “But before you get any sick ideas, what I did to these two and what I did with you were two totally separate events. They had nothing to do with each other. I did what I did with you because I wanted to. I did what I did to these two because I had to.”

Ichigo nodded, heaving a sigh that was a mix of relief and weariness. “So you just woke up and decided it was time to kill them? We should have talked it over, you should have consulted me. We’re living together, surviving together, I have a right to participate in making these kinds of decisions. We could have kicked them out, sent them on their way, it didn’t need to be… This.”

Grimmjow was shaking his head. “And wait for them to get pissed and torch the place with us still inside tomorrow night? I’ll pass. Besides. I didn’t get up with the intentions of murdering two people. Shiro woke me up growling, crouched real close beside me. He was clearly unhappy, but seemed confused too.” He shifted and used the toe of his boot to kick at something beside the woman’s corpse. “The woman was in the stairwell with this, watching us. I don’t know how long she had been there before Shi decided something wasn’t right.”

Disgusted, disgruntled shock ripped through Ichigo like ice sliding down his spine. He straightened, rigid, and jerked away. It was now dead, of course, Grimmjow had taken care of it too; a quick, clean knife to the base of the skull.

“They pulled the infant out of that car after all. Just not soon enough. Would have been better to leave it go.”

A blanket had been wrapped around it, soaked and crusted in dried blood and gore. The legs were almost gone; chewed through and devoured down to the soft, underdeveloped bone of the thighs. Everything lower was gone entirely. The belly was distended with rotting flesh and the gasses that came with it. The face was smeared in gore and the open eyes were clouded over and unfocused in a mock of a baby’s poor eyesight.

Ichigo raised a hand to cover his lower features, horrified, as he stared at it.

“My guess is that our farmers were still alive, holed up in here, when a couple and their baby knocked on the door. How do you turn away a nice couple and their infant? And they couldn’t feed a zombie baby-food, or anything out of the cupboard. That lady probably wasn’t even mom. Mom was in the car, chewing on her kid. But you know how trauma plays with the mind.” Grimmjow shook his head and bent to the task of hoisting the male again. “Now. Help me with this, or get out of my way.” He began dragging the body towards the door again.

Slow to recover, Ichigo shook his head, blinking. “N-not that one.” He said in a wavering voice, but he stepped forward, stooping to use his knife to cut the shirt from the body as Grimmjow dropped it again. With the ruined shirt, he rewrapped the dead child, swaddling it into a formless but obvious bundle. “We can use that one for Shiro.” He muttered as he stood. “We’re not going to find a fresher donor. Lets take these two out.” He motioned for the woman as he carried the baby. 

Grimmjow scowled, glancing over at where Shiro hovered nearby, “Fine. Shiro. Get over here and help me. No, grab the- Stop that, you can’t eat it. Grab the feet.” They followed Ichigo out the door, rounding a corner to drop the bodies in the snow away from the door. Ichigo laid the long dead baby against the woman’s chest, hoping somehow it would bring her and the child both a bit of peace.

Returning to the house, Ichigo tried to rub the cold out of his hands as he looked down at the remaining body. Shiro pushed around him with a plaintive sound while Grimmjow pulled the door shut. He knew he should take a moment and mourn the tragedy that had happened, the tragedy that led up to Grimmjow’s act, and the tragedy of yet more human lives lost. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t. He knew he should have cared, and to a point, he did, but not like he should have. Not like he would have a year ago, hell, six months ago. It wasn’t the kind of care that had led him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Death was a part of the scenery. Tragedy was the song of life. For the two now dead people, the horror was over. No, the real tragedy was that now Grimmjow and Ichigo were left to deal with it and move on. Could a person come back from that? He didn’t think so, but that didn’t matter either.

“How was the lighting in the bathroom?” 

Grimmjow arched a brow, shrugging. They still had no power, unless the old house had a generator hidden somewhere, but if it did, it wasn’t running. “I think the one upstairs had a skylight.”

Good enough. The world moved on and so did he. “Lets get this up there, then.”

Grimmjow frowned, now, and looked down at the corpse. He’d made it as quick as he could; a single, well aimed blow to the back of the head to knock the man senseless. Then a precisely aimed thrust of his knife through the eye socket and into the brain cavity. Nothing about it had been cruel. Cold, maybe, but not malevolent. The woman’s death had been less kind, but not on purpose. She’d seen it coming. He thought, maybe, that should have haunted him; the look in her eyes as she realized he was killing her. But it didn’t. She wasn’t the first living person he’d killed and she probably wouldn’t be the last. When Shiro had woken him in the dark of night, he’d sat up to get a better look at the situation and she’d flinched at his movements, like an animal thinking it was hidden by the darkness; ready to flee, but unwilling to bring attention to itself if it hadn’t been spotted. Her subtle tensing had earned a rabid snarl from his zombie and Grimmjow had known, then and there, that he couldn’t roll over and go back to sleep with them still in the house. And then he’d seen the old, dirty, wadded up blanket in her arms move and Shiro’s snarl became less of a warning and more of a threat. When he’d climbed from the mattress, watching her carefully as he’d absently buttoned his jeans, she had bolted up the staircase like a scared jackal. Shiro had nearly gone after her, tensing to lurch forward with a deceptive speed Grimmjow already knew he had, but he’d caught the zombie’s belt and held him in place. ‘Stay with Ichigo. Guard.’ He’d instructed, and the zombie had wheezed a quiet protest, but listened. And so Grimmjow had gone hunting.

“Why the bathroom? I just lugged him all the way down here.” 

Ichigo rolled his eyes at the complaining, “You want me to just do it here? I don’t have the tools to keep this clean, and its a fresh body. It’s going to get messy. At least in the tub, it’ll be contained.”

Grimmjow scoffed an annoyed but compliant sound as he gave in. “Fine, lets do it, then.” He moved to grab the corpse’s ankles, but lifting it with two people, one going backwards up a set of narrow stairs, wasn’t going to be easy. He changed his mind and bent near the middle instead. “Help me get it lifted, I can carry it once it’s up.”

“What?” Ichigo paused half way to grabbing the body’s wrists. “Are you sure? It’s going to be h-“

“Heavy, yeah. I got it, trust me. You think Shiro carried it down here?” To be fair, there wasn’t much that Grimmjow couldn’t get the zombie to do when he really tried, but carrying a fresh body seemed like asking for it to end up getting chewed on and he refused to let Shiro eat humans. In the long run, it didn’t matter and he knew that. Shiro was a monster and there was no changing that. And these particular monsters ate people, or anything, really, but he refused to treat his once-friend like he was what he was, so he refused to let him eat like what he was. “Either help me or turn around so I don’t embarrass myself.” 

Ichigo grunted a laugh, but he understood. He doubted the big man would have had trouble deadlifting his own bodyweight once upon a time, but after months of barely scraping by, neither of them were in the same shape they once were. He moved to the body’s opposite side and helped Grimmjow heave it up and onto his shoulder. 

“Christ.” Grimmjow muttered, as he straightened and started up the staircase, Ichigo behind him and the zombie lagging further behind Ichigo. “I really gotta start working out again.”

“Just don’t drop it on me.” When they made it up the stairs, Ichigo squeezed passed and into the bathroom. Reflexively, he reached for and flipped the light switch, only to scoff at himself as he stepped into the middle of the room to better take in the space. Lacey curtains covered a small window and he yanked them down to further brighten the small room. Nodding, he pointed to the bathtub; an old, clawfoot thing with a smallish, rounded basin.

Grimmjow grunted with the effort of lowering himself enough to be almost gentle about dropping the body into the tub. Straightening, he arched his spine in a slight stretch, before he stepped back through the doorway to tug Shiro into the room. “Step right up, you get to be the center of attention today.”

Shiro gave him a mild look and a few grumbles, before his nostrils flared with a deep inhale and his gold eyes found and lingered on the body in the tub.

“Nope.” Grimmjow redirected him back further and sat him down on the closed toilet. “You stay right there.” Crossing his arms, he turned back to Ichigo, “What are we going to need for this?”

Ichigo sucked his teeth, wincing slightly. “I guess we can make due with a sewing kit -there’s gotta be one around here somewhere- a few sharp knives. A pair of scissors would be good, too. Maybe a lighter or alcohol. Though I guess he wont get infected. A lighter, then.”

Bending in front of his friend, Grimmjow instructed the zombie, “Don’t move. No eating the body, got it?” He got no response and snapped his fingers in front of the creature’s face, to which Shiro flinched and furrowed pale brows as he looked up at him. “Did you hear me? No.” He annunciated very carefully, “Eating. It… Understand?”

Shiro hissed a surprisingly annoyed garble of hard sounds and waved a motion that pushed Grimmjow’s hand out of his face. 

The big man cocked a brow, but straightened. “You’re getting more interactive by the day, Shi.” He drawled in half a whisper, turning to leave the room.

Ichigo eyed the pair a moment, then followed Grimmjow from the room to hunt down supplies. “You think he’ll listen?”

Grimmjow shrugged. “He seemed to know what I was telling him. It’d take him a few minutes to get through to anything you need from that body anyway.”

“Maybe we should try to find something for him after we’re done.”

“Maybe.” 

The zombie had been eating more often. Grimmjow chocked it up to the cold and the fact that they’d been relying on Shiro more to get them out of scraps they were too exhausted and run down to handle on their own, but maybe it wasn’t just that. Maybe it had something to do with his higher rate of functioning. Or maybe it was all coincidence. Shiro wasn’t really Shiro anymore, just a zombie that wasn’t quite normal and hoping he was or could be anything else was nothing but heartache. Maybe they all had the capability to be more than just brainless monsters if given the chance.

Grimmjow grunted at the thought, wondering when he’d started sounding like the crazy zombie sympathizer Ichigo used to think he was.

They went opposite directions in their search; Grimmjow downstairs and Ichigo down the hall, through the few rooms. After regrouping in the bathroom, they pooled what they’d found; a jar of thread with a tin of needles, a few kitchen knives that looked expensive and sharp, a box cutter with an unopened back of blades that were sure to be sharp, kitchen shears, tweezers, a pair of needle nose pliers, a half dozen other things that looked like they might come in hand, including a few towels. Grimmjow added a lighter to the pile and set about tearing one of the towels into strips as Ichigo inspected the box knife and kitchen gear he’d brought with a critical eye, not that he had much room to be picky. After picking what was usable and what wasn’t, he stoppered the sink and dumped a bottle of peroxide he’d found under the sink into it, placing his assortment of tools point down into it in an effort to sanitize it as best he could.

Meanwhile, Shiro sat where he’d been placed, watching with a placid, not quite curious expression.

Reaching for a knife, Ichigo changed his mind and grabbed the boxcutter instead, and made a Y shaped incision across the body’s chest and down the stomach as he got started. 

Standing on the other side of the small room to watch, Grimmjow made a face. “Is this going to smell?”

Ichigo shrugged, shifting where he knelt beside the tub so he wasn’t blocking his light. “Body’s fresh, shouldn’t be too bad as long as I don’t cut open the stomach cavity. Intestines will smell a little, though.”

Grimmjow raised his brows and lifted his chin in half a nod, crossing his arms. “Lemme know if I can help.”

“Right.” Bent over his work, it was a distracted answer. “You can make sure Shiro doesn’t move too much.”

“He’s not goin’ anywhere.” Blue eyes shifted, “Right, Shiro? Stay put like I told you.”

The zombie flashed teeth. Grimmjow rolled his eyes.

“How’d this happen to him, anyway?” The big man was always so careful with his friend, like his undying body was somehow more fragile than a regular, living one. Ichigo sank his hands into the body, working skin and muscle open. He tried to ignore the look of gore smearing his skin. It wasn’t the first corpse he’d opened up, being in medical school for the passed several years, but he’d always underestimated how much those thin, latex gloves mentally distanced him from what he was touching. “Another dead, I think is what you told me.” He caught Grimmjow shift where he was standing.

“No.” Grimmjow said, the frown obvious in his growling voice. “A dead pulled his innards out once or twice, but… No. I got careless. Another group of survivors we were with for a couple weeks. Well. By we, I mean me. I was keeping him hidden, waiting for a good time to bring him out, you know. He doesn’t show well, and this was before he’d started responding like he knows what’s going on. I guess I was desperate for human companionship. Ignored how uneasy they made me. Shiro didn’t, though, he’s not capable of ignoring his gut feelings-“

Ichigo snorted.

Grimmjow sent him a look. “That wasn’t meant to be a pun you fuck. Anyway. Caught some redneck bastard abusing his kid and when I stopped him, he pulled a knife on me.” He uncrossed his arms and lifted the hem of his shirt to show a healed but obvious, angry looking scar. “Would have been a hell of a lot worse if Shiro hadn’t ignored me and followed anyway. One of the others heard the screaming and came at Shiro, thinking we were under attack. I was busy bleeding and realized too late what was going on. And Shiro-” He dropped the edge of his shirt and tossed a hand out to motion to the creature, almost angry, “I always tell him no eating the living, no attacking the living, nothin’ like that. So he didn’t.” He recrossed his arms. “We got lucky. I don’t make those mistakes anymore. Shiro decides who we like and who we don’t. And I don’t tell him not to attack people anymore.”

Brows pulled together in a regretful frown, Ichigo glanced over his shoulder at the zombie and the damage done to him, before he turned back to his work. He would have reacted the same way, before he’d gotten to know Grimmjow and his strange friend, but he didn’t think it worth saying. And he still regretted that it had happened. Better it had been another dead, less personal. Maybe the body he was cutting open would still be alive if Shiro had been torn up by another zombie.

“It’s worse now than it was, though, because of other deads. Damn things get tangled and pull his guts out more than you’d think. It’s amazing the entire lot of ‘em aren’t too entangled in each others innards to attack the living.”

“Disgusting… But that would change the entire nature of this whole apocalypse thing. Maybe as they get old and rot, we’ll be saved by it.”

Grimmjow grunted a laugh, then said out of nowhere, looking down into the mess of guts pulled out in the bathtub as Ichigo moved from the dead body in the tub to the less dead body seated on the toilet. It was a hell of a sterile and surgical setting for this operation. “Radio commercials.”

Ichigo paused as he inspected the torn flesh of Shiro’s middle, blood smeared up to his elbows. He blinked. “What?”

“Used to hate ‘em.” Grimmjow explained. “I got so annoyed. Just play some damn music, who wants to sit in the car and listen to commercials, ya know? Never thought I’d miss them.”

Ichigo smiled as he went back to work, the soft expression hidden as he bent over his task. He wasn’t sure if the change in subject was on purpose or not, but he had his suspicions. He made a few snips and peeled pale skin further back away from muscle. “Eating shitty, drive-through fast food for dinner after spending twelve hours in class.”

Grimmjow laughed. “That look your boss gives you when you walk in ten minutes late for the ninth time in a row.”

“Friday evening rush hour traffic,” Pausing, he looked up with arched brows, then added, “in the rain.”

Grimmjow’s smile was wide and genuine as he leaned back against the wall beside the doorway. Seated on the closed toilet, Shiro glanced in his direction. “Family gatherings with that one relative who always asks why you’re not married with kids yet.”

“Oh-“ Ichigo, sounding like there was a bad taste in his mouth, shook his head, “No. No, can’t miss that one.”

Grimmjow laughed harder.

Pale features aimed upward, Shiro perked slightly at the sound. Ichigo glanced up from where he bent close to the creature’s chest and thought, maybe, it looked like Shiro had a bit of a smile too. He shook his head, put his knife down, and picked up a threaded needle. He wondered if he was going crazy, or maybe looking too far into it, or if Grimmjow had been blind all those months ago, before the world had died. “Alright.” He explained, “I think I’ve got enough of the shredded stuff out of the way, time to sew you back together. Hold still.”

Doing exactly that, Shiro muttered a few sounds. They almost seemed to mimic parts of what Ichigo had said. But maybe he was looking too far into that, too.

When he was done, Ichigo straightened and backed up a step. “All done, you can get up now.”

The zombie started to stand, only to half jerk backward and consequently back down onto the closed toilet. Pale hands went to the creature’s stitched together stomach, fingers spread across skin that didn’t actually belong there, feeling across knots of thread; all in slow, careful motions as he looked down at himself. “Mmmn.” 

Grimmjow and Ichigo watched him, both silently taking note of the self awareness he was showing. 

“Bet that must feel weird.” Grimmjow decided as he pushed away from the wall. “C’mon, Shi. I don’t want to stand around in here with a tub full of fresh human.”

The zombie looked up at him, fingers stilling across his stomach. “Mm.” After a second, he stood, features twisting slightly. His fingers curled, nails starting to catch at the thread holding new skin in place.

“Hey.” Grimmjow smacked the back of his hand like he was scolding a child for stealing cookies. “Stop that. Ichigo worked hard on that. You’ll get used to it.”

Shiro snatched his hand back and growled, baring teeth. All it earned was a roll of blue eyes.

Ichigo pocketed a few of the things he’d used and pulled the bathroom door closed behind them as they left the room. He thought to tell Grimmjow that now the body would start to smell, that it would go rancid while it sat there through the day. But the likelihood of either of them actually noticing the smell was pretty slim. They’d been around enough rotting corpses to get used to it, many of them reanimated, some of them not. And unless something happened to prevent their leaving, they’d probably be here for a few days at most before continuing on. The plan was still to keep moving south, avoid the snow as much as possible as winter set in.

“I’m gonna get something to eat,” Grimmjow said as he headed down the stairs, “then take a look at the property around us, make sure there aren’t any other surprises, maybe see if there’s a working vehicle somewhere. A garage or barn or something.”

Ichigo nodded. “I’ll start a more thorough search in here, then. Start gathering supplies we can take with us.”

“Good idea. We’ll stay a couple more days if we can, rest up, then we go.”

Down in the kitchen, Grimmjow started digging through the things that had been piled up on the table; canned goods, mostly. Vegetables, fruit, a few cans of microwave soup. It was a good find for them, but none of it was meat and he had his doubts they’d be able to convince Shiro to eat anything out of a can as it was, let alone something that hadn’t been bloody once upon a time. Choosing something at random, he popped the top off and the two still living men split it. 

They were halfway through eating when Ichigo spoke up. “Are we going to talk about last night?”

Grimmjow didn’t bother looking up. “What about it? What we did, or what I did?”

Ichigo hesitated, cleared his throat, “What we did, and what I did.”

The bigger man finally glanced over, pausing. “What about it? It was fine, good even. Is it gonna happen again? I don’t know, maybe.”

Swallowing, Ichigo nodded, glancing down at his feet for a moment. “You make it sound so casual.”

“It was and we’re keepin’ it that way-“ Grimmjow paused, set the can in his hand down and studied his companion for a few moments. His features pinched briefly before evening out again. “Look. I got nothing against you, Ichigo. I like you, honestly, or you wouldn’t be here. But this is all I have to give, it’s all I got. After everything- And Shiro- I can’t–“

Ichigo held up a hand, waving a staying motion as he shook his head slightly, “No- No, Grimmjow, I understand. That’s not what I meant. I’m not- I couldn’t ask that from you.” He hesitated, forced a laugh, “I wouldn’t mind it happening again. But I meant… How I woke you up. I shouldn’t have approached it that way. That was- That was stupid and inappropriate.”

Grimmjow groaned an annoyed sound, like the entire conversation was suddenly more trouble than it was worth. “It doesn’t matter. You knew what you wanted and you went for it. Can’t fault you for that.” He waved a vague motion and went back to his breakfast, ending the conversation. “We’re not teenagers. Next time just ask.”


	6. Chapter 6

The lighter was on its last leg. It sparked a few times, but didn’t light, and Grimmjow growled a frustrated sound before shaking it and trying again. It sparked again, before finally catching. He lit the cigarette sitting between his lips with a deep inhale and sighed the smoke back out, then unceremoniously chucked the dead lighter across the road. 

“I didn’t know you smoked.” Ichigo observed, attention sweeping across Grimmjow’s figure briefly. Seated beside him, the zombie’s head jerked in the direction of where the lighter had banged against a car before dropping to the snowy ground.

“Haven’t in years.” Grimmjow replied absently, pulling the cigarette from his lips to glance down at the cherry. “I started in high school.” He explained, taking another drag, “For all of six months before I quit because of him.” He motioned toward their zombie without looking.

Ichigo followed the motion and glanced over, then did a double take and raised his brows. The zombie no longer sought out what had made the sounds that had caught his attention. Instead, his gaze was fixed unblinkingly on Grimmjow, a surprisingly angry furrow to his pale brows. “…do you see the look he’s giving you?”

“I see it.” Grimmjow said with an unsurprised ring to his tone, but didn’t look up, taking another drag from the cigarette and making a displeased face over the taste of it. “Damn things are disgusting.” He muttered, then more conversationally, “When we were kids, every time I’d pull one out, he’d wait ‘till I lit up, then-“

He was cut off when Shiro lunged at him. There was no angry growling or rush of not-quiet words. No warning. Grimmjow grunted and hit the ground grappling with the creature for a minute before Shiro managed to free a hand and steal the burning cigarette. 

Ichigo watched, startled at first. He very nearly lurched forward to pull the zombie from the larger man, before he realized those grabbing hands were going for the cigarette and not Grimmjow himself.

“That!” Grimmjow yelled, angry. “That-! You asshole! Always wrestling it away from me.” He let the cigarette go without much of a fight, fisting his hands in the creature’s jacket; a dated, beat up winter coat they’d found at the farm house. After having his middle repaired, the zombie was more open to clothing. Who knew. Grimmjow didn’t even try getting up, and it was clear he wasn’t worried about those reaching hands or potentially deadly teeth. “Are you still in there or not?!” He gave the zombie a frustrated shake. “I need to know, dammit, you’re driving me insane!” He shoved the creature back and off him as he righted himself.

Shiro landed on his butt with a confused expression that quickly shifted to a sneer of outrage as he, in what was probably a mimic of Grimmjow’s treatment of the lighter, basically threw the cigarette at the bigger man. 

Grimmjow automatically half flinched back, but being so light, the cigarette fell short and smoked against the ground between them. He glared at his zombie for another minute, than shook his head and climbed to his feet. “Lets get moving.” He absently reached down to grab hold of the zombie’s upper arm and start tugging him to his feet.

Shiro grumbled and swatted at his hand.

Grimmjow left the pack of cigarettes where it’d fallen as they moved on.

The streets weren’t nearly as deserted as they would have liked. It seemed a lot of people had had the same idea; head south, before winter got too cold and snow killed whoever and whatever was left. There was a major city ten miles south of where they were, according to the last exit sign they’d passed. In a car, that would have been a quick trip. Twenty minutes, half an hour with bad traffic. Easy. On foot, though, it was a daunting and boring journey.

They’d stopped for a break and something to eat and the sun was still rising, casting a glare across the snow coating the blacktop. The fields had given way to more woods, the ground becoming less even and more hilly, leaving their line of sight shortened. Deep ditches on either side of the road had frozen over with melt off. Even with the sun lighting the road, the trees just passed the ditches were dark and shadowed, with outstretched, skeletal branches. The few leaves that still clung to underbrush trembled in the breeze and every now and then, a bird would fly by overhead or make noise somewhere in the trees.

An overpass rose in the distance, a few miles off still. It took nearly an hour to walk that far and when they got there, they stopped, taking in the surrounding area. No exit ramp led away from it and below the overpass, if they were to continue across the ground rather than the road, sat a river. Chucks of ice flowed through it, but the surface was far from frozen. A traffic jamb had blocked the overpass itself. A semi had flipped. They could see the back end of the trailer above the other cars, perched atop the raise. Half a dozen cars blocked the road. One had careened through the guardrail and over the side, crashing nose first against the frozen earth to fall upside down, back half submerged in the river.

Ichigo adjusted the weight of the bag he carried as they stood there and studied the mess. All seemed quiet, but any number of those vehicles could still have occupants. “I think we should go around…”

Grimmjow grimaced, shrugging but shaking his head. “That water’s not frozen. Between the current and the cold, we’d never make it to the other side.”

“We could follow the riverbank, find someplace else to cross. Avoid the whole thing.”

Again, Grimmjow didn’t seem convinced. “We’d lose too much time. What if we don’t find somewhere to cross before nightfall?” He eyed the backed up traffic a moment longer, “We can make it.”

Ichigo hesitated a moment longer, watching Grimmjow start walking. The zombie, loyal in a way that made no sense for such a creature that should have had no lingering connections to a living person, followed. He gave Ichigo a look and a vaguely questioning, “Hm?” as if to ask if he were coming. Ichigo offered him a half smile and pushed on to follow up the hill.

“What are the odds we can get one of these cars working?” Grimmjow asked absently, as much to himself as to Ichigo. He’d been traveling alone, with just Shiro for company, for so long that sometimes he still talked just to hear another voice and then was caught off guard when Ichigo replied.

“What are the odds we can get the rest of them out of the way, even if we do get one running?”

Steps stuttering for that fractioned second of surprise, Grimmjow snorted. “Good point.” Reaching over his shoulder as they made it to the first of the vehicles, he pulled the sword from its makeshift carrier with a slick, metallic snick. A gun rested in his belt at his back, but guns were loud and bullets were limited. He’d use it if he absolutely had to, but the sword was preferable. 

They waded through the traffic jamb in a tense, ready silence, Grimmjow leading the way with Shiro a few paces behind, while Ichigo took up the rear on a parallel course in an aisle with cars between them. They peered into vehicles as they passed, checking for supplies or dead or other threats. A dead banged up against a window from inside a car as they passed and Shiro lurched after it, growling as he flattened a hand against the glass. 

Grimmjow frowned and glanced back, “C’mon, Shi-“ But he paused, head tilting slightly as he watched. It used to be, when their pet found a zombie threat, he’d launch and be all snarling and scrambling and surprisingly animated fury. And at first, that’s what this time seemed like too, but as Grimmjow watched, he realized there wasn’t the same mindless, hungry hate to it. Shiro’s hand smeared the dirt and grime that had built up against the window, before it began gravitating lower, towards the door handle.

Not sure what was going on, Ichigo picked his way between two cars that had obviously wrecked into each other, knife drawn, and rounded the vehicle with the dead in it. “Let’s keep moving, what’s-?”

But he froze as well, almost fascinated, as Shiro finally figured out the door and unlatched it enough for the zombie within to shove it open in its mad effort to get at them. Ichigo jerked, then went forward. Before he got to the monster, the point of Grimmjow’s sword thrust through the skull from the opposite side. A few inches of cold steel, drenched in old blood and brain matter, emerged from the head a foot and half from Ichigo’s face. 

The zombie dropped before it could reach Shiro or Shiro it, but that didn’t stop their companion from growling and following it to the bloodstained snow. He tore open rotted, thin skin with his bare hands and began pulling out decrepit organs and fistfuls of rancid meat.

Ichigo took a step back, watching with a dull grimace. “Guess we did say we should find something for him to eat.”

Grimmjow nodded, transfixed for a moment with a vailed look of disgust on his features. He absently flicked the sword out to the side, spattering blood from the length of it against a nearby car. He nodded again, then turned away and resumed his way further up the rise, at a slower pace. “Might as well scout the way ahead while he’s busy.” 

Shrugging, Ichigo followed. “Might as well.” He glanced at their zombie as he passed, then up at the set of Grimmjow’s shoulders. “Does… Does it bother you? Watching him- Like that?” Of course it bothered the big man, it was a ridiculous question. “Eat, I mean. Eat like that.”

Grimmjow’s steps faltered slightly, the strength in his back softened. Than it was gone and he shrugged. “Everything’s gotta eat. Better than a living person.” 

“Yeah.”

Something slipped and scuffed in the snow somewhere off to their side. They froze, listening, searching for the source of the sound. On the other side of the vehicle nearest them, a creature stumbled, slipping on the slope of the ramp. Then another appeared, skidding between cars. Another tripped, rolling over the hood of the car in front of them to fall, groaning, before it awkwardly righted itself.

“Shit.” Grimmjow hissed, counting seven. He backed up a measured step, sword raised and ready. Beside him, Ichigo grabbed his sleeve.

“Come on.” Ichigo whispered, tugging backward. They needed to get back to Shiro, regroup. They hadn’t seen any, aside from the one Shiro fed from, in the direction they had come. “They must be coming from the road ahead. All those cars.” And now they were just following the natural slope of the road, which happened to funnel whatever dead still mobile enough to get around their way. Who knew how many more were on the way.

Grimmjow cursed again, crouching as they turned and hurried back the way they’d come. 

Shiro was in the middle of stuffing another fistful of rotted meat in his mouth when Grimmjow caught his arm. The big man didn’t slow his rushed pace as he and Ichigo retreated further downslope, yanking the creature along with him as Shiro grunted and grumbled in protest, ropey strands of slimy, half frozen blood slipping from his fingers. “Shh.” Grimmjow tried, “Let’s go.” Shiro’s grumbles turned to snarling. “Quiet-!” He hissed, as Ichigo, behind them, turned to walk backward a few steps, watching for trouble, before catching up to him again.

“There.” Ichigo pointed to the edge of the overpass, where the berm of the road gave way to become natural land again, below the snow. 

Grimmjow nodded, hurrying as he dragged Shiro along. They half ran, half slid down the hill, towards the river they’d debated crossing only a few minutes prior, before ducking to the side to hide below the ramp, where cement support structure met frozen ground. With the sloped underside of the ramp on one side, the water on the opposite, Ichigo faced one open side and Grimmjow the other, that protective, guiding hand still wrapped around the creature’s arm.

The first of the aimless groans reached them from above and Shiro’s posture straightened in a rigid jerk of muscle. Grimmjow stiffened as he felt it, turning toward his friend just as Shiro started growling aggressively. “Shh!” He warned urgently, and when it had no effect, he flattened his hand over Shiro’s mouth, whispering a rushed, “Quiet, Shiro, you need to be quiet.” The zombie only growled more, backing up to get away from the hand across his mouth. “Stop-!” Grimmjow hissed, his other hand grabbing the creature by the collar to keep him close, “Please,” There was urgency in his voice. They could handle a few monsters, maybe even a dozen, but there was no telling how many were on their way down that slope. Facing him now, Ichigo watched the struggle with near panic, one hand hovering near one of the guns they’d found that he now carried. The weapon was loud, though, if they drew enough attention to need it, they would already be done for. “Shiro, listen- Shi, you have to be quiet-“

From above, a monster tumbled from the overpass, somehow managing to fall over the safety railing. It thudded to the frozen ground of the riverbank, where it squirmed brokenly, teeth gnashing when it caught sight of them. Shiro jerked in its direction and Grimmjow’s hold on him tightened, yanking him back again. The motion earned a litany of angry not-words.

“Shit.” Ichigo hissed, heading for it. “If it draws more attention than Shiro-“

“Wait.” Grimmjow held a hand out, “Drag it back here, bring it over. Quick. Maybe it’ll keep him quiet.”

Ichigo nodded hurriedly, darting out from under the cover of the ramp with a glance above them. The zombie reached for him with hungry snarls from where it laid broken on the ground, mud that had sat undisturbed below a thin layer of wet snow splattered and smeared around it. Ichigo crouched just within reach, sweeping aside a clawing hand while he drove his knife into its temple. The snarling and reaching stopped and Ichigo snagged the body by the collar, taking a quick look around him before he started dragging it through the snow.

Grimmjow bent to help him drag it right up in front of Shiro as he neared. “Here.” He whispered almost harshly, half pushing Shiro down toward it. The zombie turned and snapped teeth at him in an aggressive, unhappy gesture. Grimmjow rolled his eyes. “Eat. Quiet.” He tried again. He even bent and cut the stomach open, using his knife to rip out innards to try to entice his friend. Pale nostrils flared in a deep inhale at the smell of rotting meat, sickly eyes landing on the body while the creature hesitated.

At his side again, Ichigo scanned the area they could see from their position under the overpass. He shook his head, voice low. “We might have to cross the river after all.”

“No. It’s gotta be deep, right? It’s not frozen, there’s a current. If it was shallow enough to walk through, it’d be frozen.” He breathed a relieved exhale when Shiro finally dropped to dig into the corpse at their feet and readjusted his grip to fist fingers in the back of the coat they’d convinced him to wear, just in case Shiro decided to get distracted by something else and lurch. Sometimes he wished he would have kept that leash handy. But those moments were few and fleeting. He wouldn’t have the stomach to keep his friend tied up like an animal, even if it would have been more convenient. 

“What are we supposed to do then? Wait it out?”

Grimmjow shrugged, having no better an answer than Ichigo.

“It might be a lot to wait out.” Ichigo drawled. “There’s no telling how backed up traffic is or how many made it out. We could head for the trees again, follow the tree line for cover as far as we can.”

“We’d still have to find a way to cross the river.” Grimmjow sighed a tense breath. For now, they seemed safe enough. They were out of the way, at least, and not within immediate eye shot of the monsters making use of the road. So long as they all stayed quiet, they could probably wait it out, and if the worst happened and they drew attention, their place under the overpass was more defensible than being out in the open trying to make it for the trees. Sitting down at Shiro’s side, Grimmjow glanced up at his traveling companion. “You wanna make a suicidal run for the trees, go for it, but you’re on your own. Shiro and I are waiting to see what happens.”

Ichigo looked displeased about it, but there weren’t many options open to them. Grimmjow wasn’t wrong; they couldn’t cross the river. They couldn’t afford to end up soaked through and trooping across snow covered wastes. They’d never make it to the city that way. And who knew how many dead they might attract if they tried to run; there could be anything from half a dozen of them to triple digits. Maybe more. Ichigo sighed a quiet, irritated sound, but lowered himself to sit across from Grimmjow. 

The quiet between them was tense as they waited, listening to the groans and shuffle of steps that sent rocks and debris skittering down the slope of the road. When Shiro was finished eating what he wanted from the corpse, he sat quietly, either forgetting what he’d been worked up over or feeding off the calmer moods of his companions. Every so often, either Grimmjow or Ichigo would lean to the side and peek around the smooth concrete bottom of the ramp to peer out at the road they’d just followed, watching the monsters from above follow the path it created. If nothing else, at least it led the dead away.

Eventually, it seemed the group -people who had died in accidents, or fallen victim to panic or the dead, people who had been in the traffic jamb leading into or out of the city- thinned enough that Grimmjow and Ichigo deemed it safe to risk.

Shivering from being hunkered down and still in the snow, they cautiously left the overhang of the ramp and made their way up the bank of slick snow onto the road. Tracks and scuffing trails had been left in the snow between cars. Every now and then, a moan or the crunch of shifting snow and ice would reach them. Whether it was from a monster or a vehicle and the wind was impossible to tell until they came upon a source. Using the cars as obstacles and barricades, lagging monsters were easy enough to avoid or kill without too much risk. 

They made it to the crest of the raise without incident; Grimmjow with his sword drawn and Ichigo with his knife ready, Shiro loyally following. Once at the peak of the on ramp, absently glancing up at the expanse of the overturned semi truck, they both paused of their own accords. Before them, following the curve of the ramp, cars lined the road. One tottered in the breeze, the front half pushed through the guard rail and hanging precariously over the ledge. It groaned with each gust of icy wind. Cars stretched as far as they could see, packing the road that lead to and from the city in bumper to bumper walls that divided the highway into crooked, uneven lanes.

The tip of Grimmjow’s sword absently lowered to the ground, unnoticed, as the man stared across the vista. The city beyond, still miles away, was grey and cold and looked every bit as foreboding as the uninviting meld between lifeless ground and colorless sky that made up the horizon. “So much for trying to get a car started.” He said, voice hoarse. 

At his side, Ichigo nodded numbly.

Shiro, as if bored of the whole thing, looked from Grimmjow, to Ichigo, and back again, before he pushed between the two and started forward again. They watched him pick his way between the bodies of cars, following the footsteps left in the snow by his kind. After a moment, Ichigo elbowed his companion. “We might as well get started.” He muttered, passing the overturned trailer. “It’s almost like he knows where we’re headed.”

Grimmjow shook his head, following. “He’s just following the road like the others were. We just happened to be facing the city instead of away from it.”

Ichigo shrugged. “Maybe.” He conceded. “Maybe not. He’s obviously different from the rest of the dead we’ve come across. Maybe there’s others like him, that are somewhere between living and not.” He picked his way between vehicles carefully, watching for movement and listening for footsteps not their own. The atmosphere was tense, like a held breath.

It was Grimmjow’s turn to shrug and, “Maybe.” The conversation was in quiet voices; more of a way to keep themselves and each other calm while the tension of possibly walking straight into another moving wall of undead loomed ahead. He peered into the vehicles he passed, not really searching for anything in particular, but on the lookout for everything. The wind was frigid and piercing above ground level as they were, but the cars blocked some of it.

“You ever wonder if maybe he could be the cure to all this?” 

Grimmjow took a moment before he finally turned a look Ichigo’s way, sword raised again so that the dull side of the one edged katana rested against his shoulder, ready but not weighing on the strength of his arm. 

“What?” Ichigo asked, when no answer seemed forthcoming.

The big man shook his head in that way that means ‘nothing’ that only ever actually means there’s something, turning his attention ahead of them again.

“What?” Ichigo insisted.

“You actually think there’s a cure to it?” Grimmjow leveled a look at him again, but it stuck this time, searching boyish features.

Ichigo shrugged. “I don’t know. There has to be, right?”

“Doesn’t have to be. Why should there be? You even know how it started?”

“No.” Ichigo answered, defensive. “Do you?”

“No. No one does. I’ve heard a whole lot of different speculations; from people, survivors. On the radio before the broadcasts went down. No one knows. And anyone smart enough to figure it out is either dead or no longer has the equipment needed. No more computers, no more labs, no more test equipment. Even if someone did know what the actual cause was, how would they make a cure? How would they mass produce that cure? Distribute it? No planes, no machinery, not even radios. No way of getting word out, or telling people where to go. No safe way of approaching people at all.” Grimmjow shook his head. “There’s no cure. This is it. This is the world now.”

Ichigo frowned at him for a long, hard moment. “I don’t believe that.”

“You know, I really hope I’m wrong too.” Grimmjow said. “I hope they find a cure, maybe a vaccine against it for those still alive. I hope, at the end of this, you can find whatever’s left of your family maybe, or find a nice community to be a part of and forget about this entire, shitty journey. I hope cities can be reclaimed and people can settle down, start over.”

Frowning all the harder, Ichigo was quiet a moment, studying the man’s profile. “Why are you counting yourself out of this scenario?”

The big man shrugged a shoulder. He lifted the blade of his sword into the space before them as they walked, watched the way the light played off the steel, before focusing his attention passed the point. “Because, if a cure is found and life returns to normal, what am I supposed to do with him? Let him be killed like the rest of the dead will be? No nice community would take me and him in now, let alone after they started pretending things could go back to normal.”

“That’s not true. You’re a good person, and Shiro’s different from us, but different from the dead too. They’ll see that. It might take time, but-“

“You’re delusional. He’s a monster and I’m a murderer.”

“Things are different now.” Ichigo insisted, features hardening. “In the past, you’re right; you and Shiro would have never been tolerated. But now, everyone who’s survived this long has done so because they’ve done things they wouldn’t have been able to do before. We’ve all done terrible things. You like to think you’re special, but aside from toting him around, you’re just like everyone else.”

He didn’t even realize they’d stopped sometime during Ichigo’s little speech until, ahead of them and also stopped, Shiro groaned a complaint. “Yeah yeah, we’re comin’.” Grimmjow told the creature, staring Ichigo down a moment longer, before he turned to continue again. “Stop being nosey and start walking.” The zombie garbled a few more disapproving sounds in a mimic of Grimmjow’s annoyed tone. “Yes you were. What else would you have been doing? You wouldn’t have even noticed we’d stopped otherwise.” The undead creature huffed a wet breath, leaning towards Grimmjow to bare blunt teeth as Grimmjow came alongside him. The big man rolled his eyes. “You sound awfully jealous right now, you know that?” Pale features skewed slightly as the zombie looked up at him, falling in step. The two continued through rows of cars like nothing had happened.

Having fallen into place a pace behind the two, Ichigo smirked as he watched the one sided conversation. 

Around them, the wind whistled between empty cars.


	7. Chapter 7

With all the time wasted from waiting out the band of dead under the overpass, it was dark long before they made it to the city. Fearing what might creep up on them in the dark, they had found an unlocked minivan with a smashed up front end to pile into for the night. Luggage full of clothing and personal belongings had filled the trunk. A photo album showed a happy family, children’s sports and school portraits, a dog. The family was long gone, though. Maybe they had made it to wherever they were trying to go, maybe they were safe somewhere. Maybe the little boy threw his baseball and the black lab brought it back, tail wagging. Maybe.

By the time dawn broke the next morning, they were already on the move again.

“What happens when we make it to the city?” Ichigo asked, passing cars.

“I don’t know.” Grimmjow admitted. “See what there is to see, survive until we figure it out.” Behind him, Shiro hummed an agreeable sound.

“Without viable vehicles and roads, it’s going to take us forever to get far enough south not to have to worry about the cold and snow.”

Grimmjow nodded. “All winter, probably.”

“Maybe we should change tactics. We can’t keep going like this in this kind of cold, and it’s going to get colder still. We could be looking for a place we can fortify, someplace where it would be safe to keep a fire burning. Or a generator, maybe. It’s a pretty big city, there has to be government buildings, expensive housing; things with backup power, security.”

Grimmjow was quiet for a few minutes, thinking that over as they picked their way through the frozen traffic. They had time to do that right now. “Provided the entire city isn’t so overrun we can’t get through the streets… We could clear a space to stay the nights in while we looked around.” He nodded to himself as he thought aloud. “In a city that big, there’s bound to be a lot more to scavenge than the middle of nowhere backroads we’ve been on.”

“Right.” Ichigo mused, “Might be an easier winter that way, and if it doesn’t work out, we can always go back to plan A; keep moving south.”

Turning, Grimmjow glanced at his companion. “What do you think, Shiro?”

The zombie paused and blinked at being addressed, then pushed out a thoughtful sound. Then he kept walking, towards the city they approached. 

Grimmjow looked over at Ichigo and shrugged. “Guess that’s a yes.”

Ichigo smiled, a bit of happiness and hope creeping into him after so long, but the expression faltered. “There is… one thing…that we should probably discuss.” He hesitated to bring it up. Ignoring the slight frown his tone earned, he studied the city skyline, the sky scrapers whose tops were hidden in snow-heavy clouds. “It’s pretty likely there are other people in the city somewhere, living people. We might run into them.”

“So?” Grimmjow shrugged, but there was a hard set to his jaw. “We’ll handle it.”

“We will, or you will?”

The hard set hardened and the big man turned a sharp look over at Ichigo. “That depends on first impressions.”

Ichigo sighed, but nodded, “Fair enough.”

They stopped just outside the city limits for a quick break and something to eat, but didn’t linger there long, wanting to find a decent place to hole up in before the sun sank and another cold night greeted them. Not only was the dark dangerous for what it hid, but the below freezing temperatures were equally likely to kill them.

The massive, miles long line of abandoned cars scattered and dissipated at the first intersection, where a major accident had occurred. At least a dozen cars had collided. Some were just minor fender benders, others were t-boned and smashed, still others had been hit hard enough to roll, pushed over the sidewalks to crash up against the buildings and shatter glass and brick. The shells of several burned out vehicles, charred and black, littered the crossroads. A pole that held traffic lights was toppled across one. The darkened hunk of metal the stoplights had become swung gently in the breeze funneled between buildings, creaking quietly. The smell of burned rubber and gas still clung to the air, leaving dark, greasy streaks along the nearest buildings. In one of the destroyed vehicles they crept passed, a body stirred. The remnants were melted into what was left of the seat, skinless, rotted through to charred, brittle bone. A mangled arm reached for them and a puff of sooty air served as a groan.

The hair stood up on the back of Ichigo’s neck as he put an extra step between himself and the old carnage. Grimmjow nudged him, silent, and motioned towards a side street. Ichigo nodded, pulling his attention off the wreckage to scan the area. 

They made their way tensely through an alley and out into a different, smaller street that ran parallel to the street they’d entered the city from. The wind whistled through the upper levels of business buildings that loomed like hollowed out leviathans. Once inviting store fronts yawned empty and cold and dangerous.

“I think we should stick to the edge for now.” Grimmjow said, voice low. His hand hovered against the handle of his sword that jutted over his shoulder. “Get established. We can work our way inward as we explore, but for now…”

Ichigo nodded again. It was likely that there were more dead -and living- towards the middle, where they would have become essentially trapped by buildings and obstacles. Out towards the edges of the city, the dead were sure to have scattered, drifting towards the fields and woods as they wandered aimlessly and without the constraint of downtown construction and architecture.

They crossed a litter strewn street, picking a building at random. The first storefront they came to had been looted already; the glass broken out of the front window. They picked about the mess within for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t offer them a safe place to spend the night, so they moved on. A quaint little antique shop, a small coffee shop, a flower stand; they passed by with hardly a second glance. They needed something with less glass and more defensible, solid walls and a door. Heading a little deeper into the city’s edge and crossing a few more streets, they came to a plain, boring looking office building. The door was locked, half the address that had been printed on it in shining letters worn away. It had been a small time law firm of some sort and the windows in the building were small.

“What do you think?” Grimmjow asked, looking up towards the higher stories of the building. 

Ichigo also glanced up at the building. It looked sturdy enough, made of cinderblock, with metal doors. “Looks solid, defensible. Probably untouched, or mostly so. Doesn’t look like it would have much that we could use, though.”

Grimmjow shrugged, “We can get supplies as we scavenge, for now we just need some place closed off enough to spend the nights in.”

Ichigo conceded the point, eyeing the heavy door. “Ok, how do you plan on getting in? Something tells me neither of us are skilled enough to pick a lock like that.”

The bigger man pushed a breath through his teeth. At his side, the zombie perked up and looked over at the sound. After a moment of debate, he pulled the shotgun around from where it had been strapped against his bag, checking the cartridge. He glanced at Ichigo with another shrug. “Destroy the lock, I guess?”

Ichigo cringed, turning towards the street to look out at the other buildings and the dark, empty alleyways. “That’ll draw attention.” Never mind how many dead might be lingering within the building that would be drawn right to them as they entered. If they weren’t lucky -and relying on just luck was a death sentence- they’d be surrounded in and out. “And keep us from being able to shut and lock the door again…” He turned back towards the door, giving it another once over before he backed up a few steps and searched the rest of the building, too. Off to one side, a faded sign marked the location of a fire escape down the alley beside the building. He pointed. “What about there? We could climb up, break in that door or window, and it would be out of reach of anything dead. We wouldn’t have to compromise our ground level entry.”

Grimmjow looked up at where he was pointing, “Good thinking.” He praised, nodding.

They crossed the sidewalk, rounding the building to find the escape ladder. It wouldn’t keep any potential living out, but one problem at a time. Grimmjow handed the shotgun over, in case it was needed at the landing, whether to handle a lock or more threatening obstacles. “You first.” He said, “I’ll keep watch down here. Once you get up and make sure we can get in this way, I’ll get Shiro up.”

Ichigo paused, glancing at the zombie. In the past, they’d struggled just to get the creature to figure out how to climb into the backseat of a truck. An entire ladder seemed unlikely. His coordination had been getting better, but he still wasn’t a functioning person.  
Grimmjow saw his look. “Just get up there and make sure I’m not wasting my time, I’ll take care of him.”

Ichigo raised a brow, but accepted the shotgun and shrugged as he started up the ladder. The landing was unoccupied, but it led to a door that was locked from the inside. He took a moment to glance around their surroundings from his new vantage point, then leaned over the railing. “It’s a locked door. I can probably destroy the lock,” He held the gun into view, “Are we willing to use the bullet?”

Grimmjow grimaced. But they needed a place to stay and the building didn’t seem compromised from the outside. “What do you see from up there? Anything that looks like a better camp?”

Ichigo returned his attention to his surroundings, studying what wasn’t obscured. His line of sight was limited due to the other buildings. He shrugged, “We’re in a business district, I think.” He called down in a stage whisper in an effort to keep his voice from carrying too far. “There’s a lot of glass fronts on these streets…”

The bigger man’s features creased again, but he knew as much already. “Fuck it.” He decided. “What day was the apocalypse on? Maybe it was a weekend and the building’ll be mostly empty.”

Turning from the railing, Ichigo grunted a laugh. “Fuck it.” He repeated in a mutter, holding the barrel of the gun against the latch. Turning his face away and holding his free arm up to guard, he pulled the trigger as he braced himself. The weapon, designed to be two handed, bucked in his unsteady grip, but with the barrel pressed against the door, it didn’t go far enough to make him miss his mark. The shot echoed through the silent, dead streets, bouncing off brick walls. Somewhere down the road, something crashed to the ground with the sound of shattering glass. The door swung inward with a creak of broken metal and Ichigo eased inside the doorway, listening, before he backed up to lean over the railing again and wave Grimmjow up.

From somewhere in the shadowed recess of the buildings across the street, something scuffed and clattered. Grimmjow and Shiro both spun on their heels, searching the growing gloom of the shortened winter day. Before anything could present itself, though, Grimmjow turned back to the ladder, grabbing his companion by the arm. “Up you go.” He said in a stern rush, pushing Shiro’s hand against one of the ladder’s rungs. The zombie growled a closed-mouth sound in protest and the big man pushed him against the ladder with a hand in the middle of the monster’s back. When Shiro braced himself against the object he was being pushed into, Grimmjow gripped him under the arms like he would a child, and lifted as best he could despite Shiro being a full grown man. “Up. Come on, we can figure this out.” It was said as much to himself as to the zombie.

Shiro keened an unhappy sound, pale features twisted.

From above, Ichigo bent over the landing. “Shiro!” He called, trying to get the zombie’s attention. “Up here.”

The zombie paused, before looking up with a questioning hum. He grabbed the next rung up, his attention shifting upward instead of forward. This time, when a hand settled against his bottom and heaved him up, instead of confused, unhappy protesting, he followed the momentum, attention still aimed up at Ichigo.

Grimmjow grinned when the weight he was pushing against lifted away from him. “Smartest pet zombie I’ve ever had.” He said to no one in particular. He glanced back over a shoulder, to where he’d heard the clamor, but still saw nothing. A dog, probably, he told himself, or some other stray creature trying to survive this new world. He followed behind Shiro, watching the zombie for signs of struggling or slipping grip, but aside from a clumsy pace, they made it up without incident.

The broken doorway yawned black within as Grimmjow edged into the building, Shiro behind him, and Ichigo bringing up the rear, leaving a bit of space between himself and the other two. They paused just inside, listening as their eyes grew accustomed to the dark. All seemed quiet and Grimmjow thought back to the comment he’d said jokingly; maybe the apocalypse had started on a weekend and they’d be lucky and find minimal dead. But since when had they ever gotten lucky.

Still. They pressed onward, down a narrow back hallway of some sort, before finding a staircase. In the extra space of the landing, Grimmjow pulled his sword free. If they ran into trouble, they’d be hard pressed to make a retreat back up the staircase backward. Better that he have a bit of reach, even if that meant a little less mobility in the tight confines. Scuffling from somewhere below reached them as Grimmjow’s foot settled on the first step. He paused, listened, and glanced back at the darker shadow that he knew to be Ichigo. He could just barely make out movement that he took to be a nod.

Taking up the rear, Ichigo quietly, carefully replaced the shotgun in his pack, drawing a long knife that was better suited for the silent, close space of business building hallways. 

The descent down the dark stairwell was measured. By the time they made it to the base, the scuffing had stopped and they found the space empty. Something about that was almost worse than coming face to face with monsters. It frayed nerves and left them on edge, their every breath seeming too loud in the close space. The hallway the staircase opened into was lined with doors. Shiro walked between them as if impervious to the dark, but the two living men were forced to trail hands along the wall, taking careful steps lest something lay in their path unseen. Grimmjow let the point of his sword proceed him.

“We need to find a room with windows.” Ichigo decided in a hushed whisper. Grimmjow nodded, though the agreement went unseen.

Between them, Shiro paused, reaching out to hook clumsy fingers in Grimmjow’s shirt. At his back, Ichigo bumped into him with a near silent curse, dropping his free hand against the zombie’s back. “What is it?”

“Dunno.” Grimmjow answered, turning enough to find pale fingers. The grip on his sword’s handle was tight enough to make his knuckles ache. The zombie hissed a low sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand. Then the fingers he held tugged to the right and Grimmjow found himself following the suggestion, willing to trust his friend in this. “Guess we’re going this way.” He muttered, letting Ichigo know of the direction change.

Ichigo scowled through the mild terror of their situation. All was quiet and he told himself they’d hear if anything untoward came upon them. “I regret agreeing to this.” He all but breathed out. “The streets might have been safer; we could see what came at us.”

“No,” Grimmjow told him, an edge to his voice. “This is perfect. If we can find a way to get some light. This building is defensible, we can close up doors, clear rooms, make something useable out of this place.” And there was no shortage of storage space. The possibility of running into other people had weighed on him since before they’d made it to the city, but a building full of offices and doors all but negated that. They could coral dead into rooms they didn’t want to use, then simply opening a door became a defense measure; built in security. While closing and locking other doors could put space between them and others.

“Fine and good,” Ichigo muttered, “but we can’t do shit if we can’t see.”

“We’ll figure something out. We’ve managed this long.” Feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time, Grimmjow grinned in the dark, the fingers wrapped in his own feeling almost warm.

They ran into trouble only once, Shiro mostly leading the way. True to Ichigo’s thinking, they heard the lone dead before it got to them. Unable to see much in the absolute dark of windowless hallways, Grimmjow had pushed Shiro down to his knees and told Ichigo to do the same, to get down as low as possible, and not move from where they were. He used the creature’s hungry growling like sonar, sword swung well above where it could mistakenly hit one of his companions.

Eventually, Shiro managed to lead them to a room on the outer side of the building, where a long, barred window high up in the wall let gloomy, evening light through. They deemed it good enough for the night, shutting the door they’d come through and pushing a heavy, wooden desk up against it. 

They slept in, later than usual, at least, that next morning, in a tangle of warm limbs on rough office carpeting. “I miss that mattress.” Ichigo decided, an ache creeping into his body that had nothing to do with the night prior and everything to do with cold, hard ground. Grimmjow grunted his agreement. 

The morning was spent with more exploring, enough to find the front entrance. It had been barred from inside, meaning they surely had company somewhere within, but the place was mostly quiet thus far. Selecting a room that seemed intact nearby, they dropped off the gear they carried but didn’t immediately need, pulled the door shut behind them, and set off into the city. They could always backtrack and grab their gear if they found some place more fitting, which they inevitably would in a city, but for now, it was safer not to be weighed down. 

“Why don’t you ever ask questions?” Ichigo asked, voice low as they trekked through deserted, litter strewn streets. “I ask you things all the time and you answer like an open book, and never ask in return.”

Grimmjow shrugged, eyes scanning alleys and gaping doorways. Like the night before, and as they’d predicted, the outer portion of the city seemed mostly empty. “At first, it was because I didn’t care. Didn’t want to get to know you. Figured we wouldn’t keep company long, either we’d go our separate ways or one of us would end up dead. Now-“ He shrugged again, starting a new thought that answered the same question. “Because I know you had twin sisters and a father and they’re not with you now.”

Ichigo jerked to a stop, shoes scuffing against gritty blacktop.

“You carry your wallet still too.”

“You went through my things?” He wasn’t sure if he felt betrayed or not, but it was certainly unexpected. Though, he wasn’t sure why it was even that. Grimmjow was sharp, and he’d shown himself to be competent many times. It only made sense that the man would have checked into who he was traveling with.

“Didn’t know you or if I could trust you. I just wanted to figure out what I could.”

Ichigo frowned, brow creasing, and began walking again, the shotgun in his hands lowered but loaded and ready, though, with as loud as the weapon was, it was a last resort. Grimmjow took point with his sword for that reason. He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know if they’re still alive or not, truthfully. I was away at college when all this happened. My family lived across the country. My old man’s strong, though, and my sisters are smart. The house is attached to a small doctor’s clinic with supplies. My father’s been kind of a shut in since my mom died, so he tends to stockpile when he goes to the store. They might be alive.”

“They might be.” Grimmjow agreed, nodding slightly, but he couldn’t look in Ichigo’s direction while he said it, and went back to scanning their surroundings.

There was a long silence, as they wandered the streets, before Ichigo spoke again. “If we happen to find them, and they’re still alive, they’ll welcome you in. You and Shiro.”

Blue brows arched slightly, even bluer eyes finally turning on Ichigo.

The smaller ignored the look, but nodded slightly. There was no need for Grimmjow to give up on finding a place to belong, people, a community. 

Blue eyes slid over, passed him, and Ichigo followed the gaze to see Shiro staring at him too, watching, listening. There was something uncanny in his sickly eyes, something like comprehension. Then it was over, and the zombie turned away with a low, grumbled jumbled of sounds, to continue his walk through the streets. Ichigo and Grimmjow fell in line, the idea of letting the zombie lead not really all that strange these days.

The further down the street they went, the further they left the business district behind. Large, square buildings gave way to more varying shapes and colors. Store front, plate glass windows gave way to balconies and sliding glass doors. The bland concrete of sidewalks started sprouting the cultured break of landscaping, landscaping that had since grown wild without tending in the summer, only to die in a tangle of skeletal brush with winter. Apartment buildings rose nearly as high as the skyscrapers in the middle of the city, towering over the two and three story buildings that ran around the outer edge. Signs advertised gated communities, pets welcome, leasing and move in dates, the once vibrant colors meant to attract attention faded and worn.

“You ever live in a place like this?” Grimmjow asked, looking up at the tower of modern cut stone, with its metal and glass rails and blocky, squared features; a place that would have had monthly rent costing more than his car.

Ichigo shook his head. “No. An old family home, with creaky stairs and small rooms.”

“Yeah, me neither.” In the yard adjoining the sidewalk, an arm shot through the fence that kept the property separate from the public. Snarling and thumping sounded from behind the gap. “Jesus fuck.” He muttered, jerking back as he sidestepped the reaching hand.

A snarl from ahead of them pulled both men’s attention just in time to see Shiro dart around the corner of the fence. Grimmjow cursed again, reaching up to drag his sword free, and took off after him.

“Wait!” Ichigo hissed, hurrying after Grimmjow. He listened to the sounds of something crashing and bouncing against the blacktop of a driveway, then skidding shoes and the sharp slice of a blade through something wet. He turned the corner just in time to see Grimmjow back up a step, pivoting to drag his blade free of a crumpling body and turn towards another zombie. Shiro was nowhere in sight. 

“Go!” Grimmjow yelled, pulling a hand away from his sword long enough to wave Ichigo away. There were half a dozen dead between them, with more clawing and squeezing their way through the fence that wrapped around the property. He backed up another step, blade whirring, towards an open gate that led between two apartment buildings. “Go-!” He urged, “I’m goin’ after Shiro, get outta here!”

Ichigo skidded to a half panicked stop at the big man’s first shout. Without many options, he backpedaled, yanking his knife free, before he turned on his heel and ran.

It didn’t take him long to lose the few shambling creatures that followed him. Most went after Grimmjow and all the motion and noise he was making while he mowed his way through the group he’d stumbled into. He scurried passed the neighboring building, then rounded it into a narrow walkway that ran between buildings, his intent to get around the building, then head back towards where Grimmjow would emerge from between buildings. Instead, he nearly ran face first into Shiro and the person, just a kid, he’d went after. “Shiro!” Ichigo called, hesitating, then pivoting to grab the creature by the arm. 

The teen looked at him, back to Shiro, then bolted. “Wait-!” Ichigo started to protest, ready to go after the kid.

The zombie in his grasp had other ideas. Shiro flashed teeth at the stranger as if to send him scurrying all the faster, than tried to bold in the other direction. He nearly broke free, and when Ichigo didn’t let go, he nearly dragged Ichigo from his feet. 

Ichigo jerked him right back, “Stop!” He hissed, exasperated, as he tugged the creature back to his side. “We need to get Grimmjow.” 

At that, the creature stopped long enough for Ichigo to recover from his shock of the situation. He turned yellow eyes on the living man, tugging his arm free. A mild look of concentration tugged at pallid features, gritting out awkward sounds. “Thiimm hmn.” 

Ichigo watched him a moment, seeing… Something. Not life, but renewed awareness. He continued his rush down the alley behind the apartment buildings, on the zombie’s heels when Shiro took off again, but with purpose this time.

They rounded the building Grimmjow had been working his way alongside, finding scattered bodies and parts of bodies. A zombie with too much damage, delivered by a sharp blade, lay growling and reaching for them a few paces from the opening of the walkway. But no Grimmjow.

Almost unnoticed, the heavy clouds above finally began letting lose the snow they’d promised.

Ichigo cursed, stopping a few steps into the path to spin to face the direction he’d entered from. The man could have gone back the way he’d come in, but blood splattered the smooth, modern surfacing of the apartment building. At the hole in the perimeter fence, three zombies had tried to cram through at once. One’s head was cut in half, what was left of the brain dripping in thick, turgid strands. An arm was gone from another, and it and the still animate companion couldn’t get the leverage to squirm their way free, effectively blocking the gap to stop whatever other monsters lay behind them from getting through. Their frustrated, mindless snarls were met with a rumbling growl from Shiro.

Shaking his head, Ichigo led Shiro from the walkway, back into the back alley that ran behind the buildings. “How far could he have possibly gone?” He asked, to himself, mostly. The surroundings were quiet, aside from a few muffled groans and growls from the trapped dead. At his side, Shiro tugged his coat, grumbling nonsense that held distinct sounds and the breaks where words would start and stop. Ichigo watched him a moment, before motion for the creature to continue, “Ok, lead the way.”

As if understanding him, Shiro turned and hurried down the alley, leaving Ichigo to scramble in his wake. The entire trek was punctuated by Shiro pausing briefly to listen, look or smell, or however he was guiding them, before he continued on.

They turned a corner at a near sprint, and Shiro’s hand shot out to catch a zombie in the face, fingers hooking around bone. Ichigo stuttered a step, but didn’t slow, and drove his dagger into the monster, its mouth gaping and lower jaw turn free. He stepped over the missing mandible a few paces passed the dead. There was a drivenness to Shiro’s pace, like necessity forced it.

They rounded another corner and found themselves on an open, residential street. A few cars lined the road, once manicured lawns, now little more than expanses of dead, overgrown grass under a blanket of snow, leading to upscale apartment buildings. Aside from the signs of abandonment, the area looked almost untouched.

Shiro paused in the middle of the street, looking around them as if lost. Ichigo came up to his side, “I don’t see any foot prints.” All around them, the snow fell in silence.

They spent hours searching, until Ichigo, bundled up in all the clothing he had, shivered, the cold air burning his lungs and the frigid temperature stealing his strength. Even Shiro’s movements seemed slower, delayed somehow. “We need to get inside and warm up.” He said, the words barely audible and muffled as he spoke through the collar of the coat he had pulled up to cover the lower half of his face. “Maybe he doubled back, he might be waiting for us at camp.”

The zombie growled, trudging through freshly fallen snow, and made no effort to listen.

Even without words, Ichigo knew Shiro was right. They weren’t exactly hiding, and Grimmjow wouldn’t have left them -he wouldn’t have left Shiro- to fend for themselves. He would have backtracked, he would have found them by now if he were able. He hugged his arms around himself, willing more heat into his numb hands and face and feet. His legs ached. But they continued on.

And then, echoing through the streets, the sound of a familiar, deep voice. The yell, rage and frustration, bounced between buildings, but couldn’t have come from far. The falling snow wouldn’t have let it carry.

Shiro’s head snapped up and paused just long enough to get his bearings, to figure out what direction the yell had come from, before he darted off with renewed energy. He led them through the street, sliding between parked cars to cut down a different street. Ichigo struggled to keep up with that surge of inhuman stamina.

He caught up with the creature in a parking lot, where Shiro was spinning slow, searching circles. “Where, Shiro? Where-?” He panted, the cold air harsh in his throat. 

His answer came in the form of a dull but heavy thud. He jumped, spinning towards the sound, to see a broken, sword slashed zombie twitching in the drift of snow blown up against an apartment building. He looked up, where the corpse had to have come from, to find Grimmjow. Ice cycles clung to the roof’s edge, a few cracking, then breaking free to plummet to the ground below as the weight of the man shifted.

Ichigo watched as his companion backed up another step. The building, which had once been an upscale apartment complex, was six or seven stories tall. And there at the top, Grimmjow stood, inching towards the edge, where the roof gave way to a long descent to the street far below. His back was to the drop-off, several zombies crowding around him within Ichigo’s field of view. He had no way of knowing how many more were out of his sight. 

“What is he doing?!” Ichigo hissed, as much to himself as to the zombie nearby.

Debris and more ice from cracked, neglected cement and brick rained down as Grimmjow’s planted back foot found the edge of the roof. The big man stumbled, before righting himself and adjusting his balance, the sword hacking into rotting meat.

At Ichigo’s side, Shiro froze, strange eyes directed upward as he watched his old friend try to keep up a defense with a weapon he was only self taught in. Pale fingers clenched and unclenched, before he took off, toward the building, with the deceptive speed he rarely showed. A wheezing, high pitched sound coughed from his throat, holding a strangely familiar “Grimmmn” sound to it.

Transfixed on the terrible scene, it took Ichigo a moment to realize the creature had taken off. Just as he was about to follow, their companion lost his run of luck. The small hoard before him pressed too hard, or the wind shifted, or his tired swing of the sword slowed too far. Whatever the case, Grimmjow was forced to slide back too far and there was no more roof below his feet.

“No-!” Ichigo lurched a step forward, but he was helpless to do anything other than watch.

Whether it was luck or on purpose, Grimmjow crashed into a balcony a few stories below roof-level. He landed on his back and rolled onto his side, before he quit moving. The wooden structured creaked and shuddered with the impact of his weight. Not a second later, a zombie from the roof above clumsily fell over the edge, it’s shoulders and outstretched arms catching the wobbly railing, before it ricocheted and crunched against the snow covered sidewalk below.

A moment of panic choked the air from Ichigo’s lungs, before he counted the number of windows below the balcony; three, and the number of windows from right to left before the balcony; five. Third floor, fifth apartment down the hall. With the number on repeat inside his head, he finally broke from his stunned horror and sprinted for the front door.

When he rounded the landing of the first staircase, he caught sight of a flash of white nearing the top of the third floor landing above him. “That one, Shiro!” He called, leaning over the railing to peer upward. 

The zombie paused just long enough to look down at him, before he spun away and started down the dark hallway.

By the time Ichigo made it to the right floor, he could hear snarling and growling and the sound of something heavy thudding into something solid. He hissed a curse, tearing down the length of the hall as fast as he could run, the sweat running cold down his back below his coat. He skidded as he threw himself through the broken doorway, realizing Shiro must have gotten too impatient to wait for him to figure out the door. He found the zombie inside, clawing at a sliding glass door, face to face with another zombie. The monster hissed and snarled through the glass at him as he made a ruckus, exaggerating his movements. 

A distraction, Ichigo’s mind supplied. Similar to what the pale creature and Grimmjow had done upon first meeting Ichigo. A zombie must have landed upon the balcony Grimmjow had landed on and the man’s pet was determined to keep it away from him.

Ichigo rushed to the balcony door, knife in hand, and threw the latch back. The monster on the balcony twitched in his direction and Shiro’s snarling redoubled, a dirty fist pounding against the glass hard enough to shake the frame. The zombie outside jerked its attention back to him and continued chewing and clawing at the glass while Ichigo slipped out, jamming his knife to the hilt in the thing’s head as it turned to him again. It crumpled to the wooden porch.

Almost before it came to a rest, Shiro was on his knees at his friend’s side. Ichigo dropped down beside him in a rush, laying a hand against the man’s cheek. “Grimmjow-! Grimm-“

“Mnnn-n.” Shiro pushed sounds from his dead throat and though they weren’t much different than his usual sounds, there seemed a deliberateness to them, the sound rough, raw.

Ichigo glanced up to find a scowl tugging at pale brows. His hand slid from Grimmjow’s features, to the side of his neck, where a strong pulse danced against his fingertips. “It’s ok, he’s alive.” He breathed, relieved enough for the both of them. Above, he could hear the shuffle and groan of the monsters on the roof, still milling around the edge in search of their suddenly missing quarry.

Easing Grimmjow onto his back, he hooked his arms under the bigger man’s own, and began pulling him through the doorway, into the apartment. “Shiro, come on. Inside.” He pulled the larger man’s dead weight into the middle of the sitting room. It was surprisingly pristine; all the furniture in place, shelves and pictures dusty but untouched. There was a closed door to one side. He assumed it led to a bedroom, but there was no noise coming from the other side, so it could wait.

Out on the balcony still, Shiro had backed up against the railing and was looking upward with a snarl and bared teeth.

“Shiro!” Ichigo hissed, “Get in here. Now.” The tenseness in his voice wasn’t necessarily directed at the creature, so much as at the fact that Shiro was only going to draw more attention from the monsters above and if more than a two or three of them managed to land on the balcony, the glass door wouldn’t hold, nor would Ichigo be able to fight off all of them while also keeping Grimmjow at a safe distance. 

The undead companion, however, didn’t seem to appreciate his tone. When Grimmjow ordered him around or got stern, it was met with grumbling protests. When Ichigo did it, Shiro turned on him with a curled lip and a growl that could have froze the dead. 

“Ok- Ok, easy…” Ichigo held up a staying hand, straightening slightly when the pale zombie took a hard step in his direction, through the doorway. He slowly climbed to his feet, careful with how he neared to pull the door shut behind Shiro. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just need your help to keep an eye on Grimmjow.” He nodded slightly, pointing to the prone man where he lay in the middle of the floor. “Right?”

Dead eyes narrowed, but the growl fell away and Shiro passed the still living human without issue. He dropped down at Grimmjow’s side with a huff of stale air. Surprisingly careful fingers brushed the side of Grimmjow’s neck in a motion Ichigo swore was a mimic of how he’d felt for a pulse. “You loved him too, didn’t you?” Ichigo asked, more to himself than the zombie. He stood there and watched for a few minutes, before the almost gentle touches earned a groan of returning awareness. Ichigo rushed the few paces forward.

Grimmjow first woke to a terrible pounding in his skull, remembering intimately the way it had sounded when he’d hit the ground. Ground…? He groaned, feeling the sound in his throat more than hearing it. Too soft for ground. Too… 

He opened his eyes to light that was almost too bright for the pounding in his head, and hovering just before his unfocused vision was a dark, dead silhouette. With a startled intake of air, he snagged a knife from his belt.

“Wait–!” Ichigo lurched forward. He should have expected this kind of reaction. He should have expected Grimmjow to wake up disoriented, but fast and reactive. It was sometimes the only thing that kept them alive. Yet he’d been so endeared by the way Shiro seemed so concerned, he hadn’t considered the danger of it.

Shiro’s hand snapped up, catching Grimmjow’s wrist, stopping the blade mere inches from the side of his head. He hissed his protests in harsh, guttural, offended sounds.

“Shiro?!” Grimmjow’s hand opened and the knife thudded to the floor at their side. “Shiro? God, you fucking idiot!” He started levering himself upright and the hand wrapped around his wrist released, “I almost-“ But he stopped, the words dying in his throat and his movements stilling when the zombie’s wordless protests changed in sound.

“Nnno-“ The sounds were dragging and hard. “T.” But they were different from the normal way he pushed air from his useless lungs. “Id. T.” Even the expression on pale, dirt-smeared features was different. There was concentration, even frustration, marring ashen brows and twisting pallid lips.

Frozen in place, Grimmjow stared with wide eyes. He didn’t even realize his hand had fisted around the creature’s arm. “Did you- He just–“ He slowly pulled his stunned gaze from his old friend, looking over at Ichigo like he thought he might be losing his mind. “D-did he…?”

Relief pulled a tight laugh from Ichigo’s throat, but he shrugged and relaxed into a crouch at the big man’s side. “Yeah-“ He shook his head, as disbelieving as Grimmjow was. “I don’t know. Maybe. He did it about twenty minutes ago too. I swear it was your name. When you fell, he-“

“I didn’t fall.” Grimmjow cut him off with a glare. “I had a choice; I couldn’t beat ‘em. I could either let them have me and risk not being too dead to turn, or I could take a step back and hit the ground.”

A scowl tugged across Ichigo’s features. “That would have killed you.”

“That was the point. Speaking of-“ The air froze in his lungs as he started pulling himself up again. Pain shot through his battered body. “Didn’t hit the ground, I take it… Still a bad landing, though.”

“No. You hit a balcony a few stories down. We’re in the apartment attached.” Ichigo watched him a moment, before reaching a hand out to help. It was accepted without a word and he walked the big man to the couch pushed up against a wall. “I think we might have to stick around for a few days.”

Grimmjow eased down with a wince, glancing around the place. The throb in his skull made his vision dark and grainy, and crept down his spine in sickening waves. “Looks quiet.” He muttered, trying to blink and clear his vision.

Ichigo nodded. “We’ll have to borrow a door from one of these other rooms to shut off the front entry. Shiro wasn’t patient enough to wait for me.”

Blue brows arched. “He broke through the door?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if he’s relearning how to talk or just figuring out how to mimic our words, but he saw you fa- step off the edge, and he seemed to know what it meant when you didn’t move. He was…” He shook his head, looking over at the zombie. “I don’t know. It was a very human reaction, Grimmjow.”

For his part, Shiro stared at him the entire time he spoke and to Ichigo, the stare seemed a little less blank than usual.

**Author's Note:**

> Feed your author; give me your thoughts!


End file.
